Call for Consultant(s): Market Assessment of Digital Employment Opportunities for Refugee Youth in Kenya

Call for Consultant(s): Market Assessment of Digital Employment Opportunities for Refugee Youth in Kenya

Position Title: Consultant – Market Assessment: Digital Employment Opportunities for Refugee Youth in Kenya

Location(s): Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement, Nairobi

Reports to: DREEM SEOR Coordinator; WUSC DREEM Project Director**

Contract term: September – November 2021

Number of days: Approximately 25 days

WUSC – World University Service of Canada – is a leading Canadian non-profit organization in international development, committed to providing education, economic opportunities and empowerment opportunities that improve the lives of millions of disadvantaged youth around the world. WUSC is currently seeking to better understand the market dynamics and key actors already engaged in the sectors and regions where we are most likely to add value.

Displaced and Refugee youth Enabling Environment Mechanism (DREEM) project

WUSC, through the DREEM project, will play a unique role as a technical assistance and strategic learning partner to the Mastercard Foundation and Mastercard Foundation partners. The DREEM project will contribute to the Foundation’s commitment to meaningfully include refugee and displaced youth in their Scholars project and Young Africa Works project. As the Mastercard Foundation also works to develop a new refugee and displaced youth strategy, the DREEM project will engage with the Foundation to ensure that the project continues to support the overall goals of the Foundation.

One of the three pillars of the DREEM project is Strengthening Economic Opportunities for Refugees (SEOR), which will complement WUSC’s existing Learning through Education and Access to Employment Pathways (LEAP) project and provide refugee entrepreneurs, especially young women with improved access to market-oriented business support services that improve business and employment outcomes in Kenya.

Entrepreneurship skills and support are critical in refugee contexts, where young people are often unable to access formal employment opportunities. While Kenya has a vast range of organizations supporting entrepreneurship and skills development, there are few services and limited private sector engagement to support the unique needs and challenges of refugee and displaced youth. Through the SEOR component, DREEM will facilitate digital economic opportunities for refugee youth, by building the capacity of a local digital skills partner to, in turn, establish a network of small, refugee-owned ICT hubs and businesses so that they can offer market-relevant training to refugee youth on obtaining online freelance work. WUSC will build on the work being conducted in the LEAP Project, but additional funding through the DREEM program will enable us to offer expanded services to more refugee youth, as well as to design a more sustainable model where refugee-owned ICT businesses can expand facilities to freelance online workers at a reasonable cost.

To this end, WUSC is seeking a consultant to undertake a market assessment of digital employment opportunities which might potentially be available to refugee youth (particularly women) in Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement in Kenya.

The following should inform the assignment:

1. When conducting the analysis and providing recommendations, this market assessment must take into consideration the particular socioeconomic and political contexts and barriers faced by refugee youth in Kenya, namely young women;
2. The assessment should investigate the viability of commercially sustainable opportunities in digital employment for refugees, including identifying the market actors best positioned to offer these opportunities;
3. The assessment should identify similar initiatives (in Kenya and more broadly) undertaken by private, public or civil society actors and, where possible, explore learnings and complementarities.

Expected Activities

The consultant will carry out a market assessment, and produce a report outlining the current state of the market in terms of access to digital employment opportunities for refugees, including recommendations to WUSC on approaches to broaden the opportunity for refugees, including young refugee women.

The report (and presentation) should address the following:

1. Review of existing online work initiatives for refugees in Kenya (primarily literature review, should include some interviews);
2. Identification of opportunities and constraints for refugee youth (and how they might differ for young women) in Kakuma camp and Kalobeyei settlement to access digital employment (and how opportunities and constraints might differ in each context);
3. Identification of constraints in access to financial services for refugees in the context of online work and how these may be evolving;
4. The gap between current market opportunities and the skills and competencies of DREEM’s target group and what training design can successfully bridge that gap (design, duration, content, and delivery);
5. An assessment of the current range of actors who might play a role providing access to online work in Kakuma and Kalobeyei. This should include, but are not limited to, providers of electricity, Internet, computer hardware (i.e. existing ICT hubs/cyber cafes), digital training, job platforms, online employer or work packages, and financial service providers who can facilitate payments by employers to refugees;
6. Recommendations for how WUSC might invest to further develop the market for digital work in Kakuma and Kalobeyei, along with a cost analysis of these investments based on current market information.

Expected Deliverables

The consultant will be expected to produce the following:

1. A detailed report outlining findings and recommendations;
2. A slide deck version of the report to be presented to WUSC and Mastercard Foundation

Qualifications of the Consultants

The Consultant(s) is expected to have:

● Ability to write insightfully and concisely in English;

● Excellent interpersonal skills;

● Significant experience conducting market assessments (samples may be requested);

● Significant experience in conducting gender based analyses (samples may be requested);

● Expertise in the area of online gig economies, digital work or a related field; and

● Familiarity with refugee contexts – specific familiarity with the Kenyan refugee context, including government policy and regulations surrounding refugee issues is an asset.