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AMMAN — Refugee communities can be further supported by the expansion of formal financing and business opportunities, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) said in a statement sent to The Jordan Times on Sunday.
Businesses, investors and local communities are increasingly interested in being part of the expansion and opportunities in these markets in the Middle East and Africa, an IFC report said.
The report cites an IFC study entitled “Private Sector and Refugees: Pathways to Scale”, conducted in partnership with The Bridgespan Group.
The corporation and its partners examined more than 170 private sector initiatives focused on refugees and host communities in Africa and the Middle East, according to the statement.
It found that 60 per cent of surveyed companies expect to deepen their refugee-related engagements in the coming years, the IFC said.
Private firms are well-placed to create jobs and economic opportunities that many refugees desperately need.
“As forced displacement becomes increasingly protracted, longer-term development solutions must supplement humanitarian aid,” said Sérgio Pimenta, the IFC’s vice president for the Middle East and Africa.
“This new study reveals how the private sector can play an important role by engaging refugees as employees, employers, producers and customers — and identifies ways to scale up these projects so that refugees can make greater economic contributions to their host communities, while becoming more self-reliant.”
The report, the first of its kind, notes that because forcibly displaced people often end up spending years in host countries, they need jobs, financial services and skills training, the statement highlighted.
Private companies, from tech start-ups to credit card providers, are playing an important role in creating those opportunities, the study found, according to the IFC.
The study featured a number of companies in Jordan, Kenya and Rwanda.
These enterprises used their expertise and technologies to facilitate services for refugees and host communities, tackle important issues and problems and create jobs for them, the statement said.
More so, the study also found that firms can scale up their impact on refugees and host communities through innovative financial tools and products, like venture-capital approaches, cross-sector partnerships and better access to market information.
More than 68 million people have been forcibly displaced worldwide, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, including 25 million refugees and 40 million internally displaced people, the statement underscored.
Some 85 per cent of the world’s refugees are currently in low and middle-income countries, with the majority hosted in 10 countries across Africa and the Middle East.
The corporation is a World Bank sister organisation and is the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets, the statement concluded.