African Entrepreneur Collective (AEC)

Traditional aid is failing to end poverty for refugees, and modern refugees want options for making money and taking care of their families through entrepreneurship. 

Feedback from refugees themselves and countless studies on financial inclusion, point to sustaining a business as essential to achieve financial independence, improve livelihoods, and create jobs. The gap between vision and implementation persists however in terms of access to relevant digital solutions for entrepreneurs that fit the refugee context. 

In the past 5 years, AEC has provided a program of 1:1 consulting, training, and affordable loans for more than 12,000 refugee entrepreneurs across East Africa. By digitizing our services, connecting refugees to relevant digital solutions, even in remote camps, AEC will reach another 35,000+ refugee entrepreneurs across five countries in the next 4 years. Based on results to date, these refugee entrepreneurs will generate $65M additional revenue and create at least 110,000+ new jobs. 

There are 70M forcibly displaced people worldwide and the problem continues to grow. Africa is at the center of this crisis, hosting more than 27M refugees, with 26% of the world’s refugee population in Sub-Saharan Africa.  

Like everyone else, refugees want to make money and take care of their families.

AEC has verified the needs of refugee entrepreneurs through 5 years of working to help refugees start and grow businesses.  Likewise, UNHCR's 2017 refugee assessment in East Africa revealed that refugees need assistance with "livelihoods" and "income generation" to provide means to support themselves or move out of the camp. 

Right now, refugees face:

• Gaps in business skills, financial knowledge
• Gaps in access to financing, as near zero banks will lend to refugees, and more so for women and youth who are further locked out of economic inclusion strategies.
• Gaps in digital tools for the refugee context and lack of access to data/connectivity to use the tools that do exist.

The right technology, for the right user, in the right language, with the right features is simply missing -- leaving bright and motivated people in poverty as a result.

AEC has worked with more than 12,000 refugee entrepreneurs, providing training, consulting, and access to finance, which has yielded jobs in refugee communities and for the surrounding host community. 

For MIT Solve, AEC proposes to digitize our in-person work to achieve scale.  In the next 12 months, AEC will:

- Recruit, train and consult 9,200 refugee entrepreneurs to complete a 6 month business accelerator program for start-up or existing businesses across Rwanda, Kenya, and Ethiopia (Ethiopia will be a new expansion site), with a core focus on job creation in refugee communities.

- Transition all in-person content into digital solutions:  business and finance trainings delivered in multiple East African languages via Zoom, pushed via WhatsApp and interactive voice response (IVR) for feature phones.

- Develop online and mobile applications for refugee access to AEC's $800K USD affordable finance fund (backed by Kiva) using technology to overcome financial isolation. Disburse and track 6,300 loans via mobile money.

- Evaluate job, revenue, and learning outcomes through IVR data collection, analysis in CommCare, and continue to iterate using human centered design principles. 

AEC started refugee entrepreneurship work in Rwanda, where refugee populations are both recently displaced (Burundians arrived in 2016) and entrenched (Congolese who have grown up there since 1994). They access UNHCR cash stipends instead of food aid, turning refugees into customers. But without reliable small businesses, refugee customers are not able to access basic goods.  AEC has helped to build this supply side of the market.

In 2019, we expanded to Kakuma in Kenya, the world's 2nd largest camp.  Indicating its isolation, the word "kakuma" means "nowhere" in Swahili. But, IFC's "Kakuma as a Marketplace" notes 2,700 businesses complete $56M annual sales. Supporting development of home-grown solutions in refugee camps will be the most sustainable pathway out of poverty for business owners and those they hire. 

The voice of refugees is key to our program design. We hired refugees on our initial design team, and used HCD to test our offerings with refugees. Half of our clients are women, and we have gender-sensitive approaches. Refugees still run our programs, and we solicit client feedback through surveys, anonymous phone lines, suggestion boxes. These elements are essential for community trust, and we have changed our programs as a result of feedback.

Refugees want options for making money and taking care of their families. Through direct feedback from refugee entrepreneurs and studies on financial inclusion, findings show that there are many savings or vocational programs, but there is a huge gap in hard business skills and access to meaningful capital for refugee entrepreneurs.

To meet this need, AEC provides a comprehensive business growth program through capacity building and access to finance to help refugee entrepreneurs start and grow businesses and create jobs for others in their communities. 

Providing business development support is not innovative, but offering it to massively overlooked populations, contextualized for refugee lives and business context is.  And, most importantly, we show up with a different mindset from the charity approach that has not succeeded. Here's why AEC is different from the status quo:

• AEC is the largest lender to refugee entrepreneurs in Africa - which is embarrassing since we have only given 1000 loans. But nobody else is doing this. Where other programs offer investment-readiness and match-making, refugee entrepreneurs are still confined by steep collateral requirements and predatory interest rates and investors don't actually put money into these communities. AEC does.

• Many people view refugees as social burdens who have nothing to offer. To us, refugees are assets for any community. They deserve dignity and choices. Ours is not a charity model, but an economic development one which features refugees as clients -- allowing them choice, dignity, and mutual accountability. We customize our solutions for our clients, which is different than the standard one-size-fits-all humanitarian approach. 

• We believe that integration of refugee and host community is key to inclusive economic growth, and we foster this integration through both services and hiring practices. In each of the 7 camps where we work, we have integrated staff modeling this approach. We walk our talk, and have refugee, women, and African leadership.

Since mid-March, Rwanda and Kenya have been in partial-to-total lockdown. Only essential businesses have been able to operate. All borders are closed, and both countries face liquidity issues. 

To continue providing relevant services to all of our businesses during this time, AEC transitioned all of our business training and consulting content to remote channels (Zoom, WhatsApp), and we are in need of digitizing our lending program.

AEC’s original 2020 goal was to disburse 1,000 affordable small business loans to refugee entrepreneurs. Based on the new Covid-induced economic reality and the increased need for capital, we plan to double to disburse 2,000 loans. Additionally, we have secured $2M USD from MasterCard Foundation to give cash grants to 3,500 entrepreneurs, and we need technology to make this happen smoothly. 

To do so, AEC is using Odoo, a San Fransisco-based cloud-hosted ERP system, with both web and mobile applications as our ERP system.  Through Odoo, we are creating a digitized loan application, due diligence, fund disbursement, repayment and monitoring system.  We need further support to launch, iterate, and translate this into different languages, currencies, tax regulations, etc. 

But access to capital without knowing how to use it effectively won't create lasting change.  To ensure entrepreneurs are also getting needed advisory services, AEC has partnered with Viamo (formerly Voto Mobile) to create interactive voice response (IVR) training content in 4 languages, relevant for refugee context.  We are exploring IVR data collection as well.   

Both the Odoo ERP system and the Viamo IVR system are tested in other markets, and the application in Rwanda/Kenya refugee context is the new innovation. 

VIAMO (https://viamo.io/)

"Viamo connects individuals and organizations to make better decisions -- with solutions for data collection and analysis, and behavior change communication. Work in any language, use any question type, and communicate through any combination of channels: Interactive Voice Response (IVR), SMS, web app, Facebook messenger, etc. Benefit from our advanced mobile survey features: complex conditional logic, randomized branching and answer options, retry patterns, drop-and-reconnect feature, voicemail detection, incentives, etc."  Viamo just won the Covid-19 #SmartDevelopmentHack hackathon, led jointly by the European Commission and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

ODOO (https://www.odoo.com/)

"Odoo is a suite of open source business apps that cover all your company needs: CRM, eCommerce, accounting, inventory, point of sale, project management, etc." with 5 million users globally.  "Our family of apps work seamlessly together - giving you the ability to automate and track everything you do - centralized, online, and accessible from anywhere with any device.

The open source model of Odoo has allowed us to leverage thousands of developers and business experts to build hundreds of apps in just a few years."

AEC's theory of changes is simple: When local entrepreneurs have access to practical services focused on business growth and access to meaningful resources, they will improve their own livelihoods and contribute to economic development of their communities.  

Business skills lead to business growth leads to job creation. 

Additionally, AEC is a values-driven organization. Our values of purpose, achievement, improvement, bravery, and togetherness are core to our work:

- Purpose: We are a global leader providing practical tools so that our clients can grow.

- Achievement: We push ourselves to reach beyond what we think is possible.   

- Improvement: We are committed to continuous learning and growing.

- Bravery: We hold ourselves and our colleagues to high expectations.

- Turikumwe: We are together in this work, and hold each other up in hard times.

AEC has worked with more than 12,000 refugee entrepreneurs across East Africa, most of whom started businesses as a way to rebuild their lives. AEC has created tangible results with trust and respect.

From 2016-2019, AEC has supported more than 5,500 refugee entrepreneurs with training, consulting, and finance. They have generated more than $18.4M in new revenues. These entrepreneurs have created nearly 6,000 jobs in their communities. 

CURRENT NUMBER: AEC is supporting 9,000 refugee entrepreneurs across 7 camps in Rwanda and Kenya. This is a 3.6x increase over 2019, and we have doubled staff every year for the past 3 years, as we refined services for refugee communities, and achieved comparable impact in more complex markets as we expanded into new geographies. Our staff expansion now has cross-border roles, creating economies as we scale. 

In Jan 2020, AEC passed it's 3-year strategic plan, which included leveraging technology for scale.  

IN ONE YEAR:  AEC will reach 11,600 refugee entrepreneurs in 2021 Rwanda, Kenya and will begin serving refugee businesses in Ethiopia by Q3 2021. 

IN FIVE YEARS: AEC will reach 35,000+ refugee entrepreneurs across five countries. These entrepreneurs will generate $65M additional revenue circulating into refugee communities and create at least 110,000+ new jobs. 

Given the sizable demand for our services, our effective and scalable model, and the shifting need from humanitarian to development interventions, the time is right for AEC to rapidly expand our refugee entrepreneurship program. We have a proven model, and are ready to scale.

AEC has quickly become one of the largest and most recognized providers of business development services in refugee communities across the world. At the UNHCR Global Refugee Forum in December 2019, our pledge to support 35,000+ refugees put us in the global top 10 (out of 200+) pledges supporting refugee livelihoods.

Within the next 4 years, AEC will reach 100% of households in Rwanda and open new programs with a partner in Lebanon and Jordan.

To amplify impact in expansion, we will establish physical offices in new program sites, supported by centralized business functions in Rwanda, iterating programs for local culture and linguistic context, led by local staff who can navigate contexts/stakeholders. Our cost-per-client has decreased over the past few years, and we are leveraging technology for efficiency. 

The top five risks we note today are:

• Uptake of program components as we modify to meet the local context; 
• Maintaining AEC culture as we expand from a small organization to a multi-country one; 
• Transfer of knowledge from a different operating context;
• Legal restrictions/policies that prevent refugees from working; and
• Funding for start-up capital in each new site.

Before deciding to expand, we completed a risk assessment to identify challenges and opportunities. As with any new program in a new context, we anticipate snags and are committed to learning from those we can’t yet foresee.

The top five risks and proposed solutions we note today are:

• Uptake of program components -- leverage human centered design principles with clients for meaningful iteration;
• Maintain AEC culture -- embed existing staff to new site, connect peer-to-peer across geography;
• Transfer of knowledge from a different operating context -- decide what is crucial through M&E and modify as needed, embrace learning; and
• Legal restrictions/policies -- build stakeholder engagement with govt, hire locally.
• Funding -- AEC has already raised 24% of our 2020 – 2022 budget, and we are looking for partners to provide general operating support over the next four years.

While there are new challenges in new environments, we have the grit, staff capacity, and systems required to develop new practices to ensure our staff, clients, and partners are safe and meeting our stated objectives.

AEC's leadership team is diverse, women-led, rooted in refugee experience, and highly skilled to deliver on this program. AEC has 140 staff in two countries, with program delivery in 10 locations. 98% are local, 69% leadership are women, 16% are refugees).

AEC's leadership team is diverse, women-led, rooted in refugee experience, and highly skilled to deliver on this program. AEC has 140 staff in two countries, with program delivery in 10 locations.

As a result of creating jobs through small business development, AEC was first approached by UNHCR's Livelihoods Office in 2016 to work with refugees. AEC's leadership took the option to our team, asking if we should. Many of our colleagues were born in exile or are one degree from being refugees themselves. It was a unanimous yes. AEC self-funded our first program with refugees, wanting to test and iterate solutions in line with our values. Fast forward to today, the same commitment to being lean, practical, and connected to refugees is why we are the right team to execute. We couple our passion with skilled MBAs, impact investors, 9 languages on staff, CPAs, trainers, nonprofit executives, etc. to ensure that we can deliver.

From 2016-2019, AEC's refugee entrepreneurs generated $18.4M in new revenue and created 6,000 jobs. In 2019 alone, they:

- Doubled their business revenue while with AEC,
- 80% purchased assets of land or homes,
- 60% increased educational spending, ensuring the next generation thrives.

UNCHR, the Rwanda Ministry of Refugee Affairs, and the Kenya Refugee Affairs Secretariat are key partners, with whom we have signed MOUs, which facilitate our work. In both their economic development plans for refugees, they have written AEC as the lead implementing partner. With endorsement from UNCHR, we were able to reach both governments.

AEC knows this work is too hard to do alone, and we have much to learn from others. Therefore, we rely on stakeholder relationships to effectively deliver our expected results. AEC’s partners include the governments of Rwanda and Kenya, UNHCR, US State Dept (PRM), Mastercard Foundation, Ikea Foundation and more. We partner with:

- Mastercard Foundation to give one-time cash grants to more than 4,000 micro and small businesses in and around refugee camps.

- Ikea Foundation and Vitol Foundation to provide business growth through capacity building and access to finance to more than 4,500 micro and small businesses in and around refugee camps in Rwanda and Kenya.

- Kiva to adapt digital solutions to scale loans to refugee borrowers.

- US State Dept (PRM) to provide business growth through capacity building and access to finance to more than 8,000 micro and small businesses in and around refugee camps in Rwanda.

AEC was founded on the belief that African entrepreneurs will transform their continent by driving economic growth in their communities and bringing to market relevant solutions to most pressing problems. Our mission is to provide business training, affordable loans, and networking opportunities for refugee entrepreneurs to build thriving businesses, improve lives, create new jobs and contribute to their communities' economic development.

Refugees want options for making money and taking care of their families. Through direct feedback from refugee entrepreneurs and countless studies on financial inclusion, starting and sustaining a business is essential to achieve financial independence, improve livelihoods, and create jobs. While there are many refugee savings or vocational programs, there is a huge gap in hard business skills and access to meaningful capital for refugee entrepreneurs.

To meet this need, AEC provides a comprehensive program of 1:1 consulting, training, and affordable loans to help refugee entrepreneurs start and grow a businesses. AEC has worked with 12,000+ refugees, creating tangible results with trust and respect.

In the next 4 years, AEC will reach another 35,000+ refugee entrepreneurs across five countries. Based on results to date, these entrepreneurs will generate $65M additional revenue circulating into refugee communities and create at least 110,000+ new jobs. We have a proven model, ready to scale.

AEC's refugee program is 100% donor funded at present.

AEC's 4-year program budget to serve refugee entrepreneurs in 5 countries is roughly $25M USD, of which we have secured nearly $4.5M from Ikea Foundation, Mastercard Foundation, Vitol Foundation, Kiva, and others.

AEC needs additional partners to raise additional $20.5M USD grant funding to support this initiative over the next 4 years.

African Entrepreneur Collective (AEC) was founded on the belief that African entrepreneurs will transform their continent by driving economic growth in their communities and bringing to market relevant solutions to most pressing problems. Our mission is to provide business training, affordable loans, and networking opportunities for refugee entrepreneurs to build thriving businesses, improve lives, create new jobs and contribute to their communities' economic development.

From 2016-2019, AEC's refugee entrepreneurs generated $18.4M in new revenue and created 6,000 jobs. In 2019 alone, they:

- Doubled their business revenue while with AEC,
- 80% purchased assets of land or homes, and
- 60% increased educational spending, ensuring the next generation thrives.

Given the sizable demand for our services, our effective and scalable model, and the shifting need from humanitarian to development interventions, the time is right for AEC to rapidly expand our refugee program.

In 2020, AEC is serving 3.6x increase over 2019, and we have doubled staff every year for the past 3 years, as we refined services for refugee communities, and achieved comparable impact in more complex markets as we expanded into new geographies. Our staff expansion now has cross-border roles, creating economies as we scale.

AEC will leverage Solve's network to raise additional $20.5M USD grant funding and solution technology to support 35,000+ refugee entrepreneurs across five countries - Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Lebanon and Jordan in the next four years.

AEC's 4-year program budget to serve refugee entrepreneurs in 5 countries is roughly $25M USD, of which we have secured nearly $4.5M from Ikea Foundation (2019-2023), Mastercard Foundation (2020-2021), Vitol Foundation (2019-2021), Kiva (2020), and others.

AEC will leverage Solve's network to raise additional $20.5M USD grant funding to support this initiative over the next 4 years.

Additionally, AEC will leverage Solve's network to support the adaptation of digital solutions to deliver scale loans to refugee borrowers, who are 97% of our clients.  Technology solutions – including on-line application and smart phone app, integration of existing AEC data systems, and provision of technology resources directly to borrowers – will not only increase borrowers access to capital, but will significantly decrease AEC’s overhead resources and time previously required to facilitate a loan from a remote, upcountry borrower. The technology will roll out by end of June 2020.

AEC’s is looking for partners whose focus is to provide relevant and practical skills and resources to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses, achieve financial sustainability, and create jobs.

As a result of creating jobs through small business development, AEC was first approached by UNHCR's Livelihoods Office in 2016 to work with refugees. AEC self-funded our first program with refugees, wanting to test and iterate solutions in line with our values. Fast forward to today, the same commitment to being lean, practical, and connected to refugees is why we are the right team to execute. We couple our passion with skilled MBAs, impact investors, 9 languages on staff, CPAs, trainers, nonprofit executives, etc. to ensure that we can deliver. AEC's leadership team is diverse, women-led, rooted in refugee experience, and highly skilled to deliver on this program. AEC has 140 staff in two countries, with program delivery in 10 locations.

In the next 3 years, AEC will reach 35,000+ refugee entrepreneurs across five countries – Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and Jordan. 50% will be women. Driven by our values, our goals are to:

• Become the best in the world at providing relevant and impactful business development support to refugee entrepreneurs; and
• Demonstrate that refugee entrepreneurs are just as investable as any other by disbursing 6,300+ loans and expecting a 98% repayment rate.

Based on results to date, we can assume that these entrepreneurs will generate $62.5M additional revenue circulating into their local communities and create at least 100,000 new jobs for other refugees and local people living in the host communities.