(ERGO) – Fadumo Abukar feels more independent now that the small shop she set up with a group of other Somali women refugees in Dadaab’s IFO camp is starting to make a profit.
The 12 women organised their own savings fund and opened the shop selling children’s clothes, shoes and handmade jewellery with the 36,000 Kenya shillings ($360) they managed to raise.
“Today I have a source of income that we can count on and we hope to increase it in the future,” Fadumo, a single mother of nine, told Radio Ergo.
“We got tired of the staple food and inadequate handouts we get in the camps – sorghum, wheat, and beans and cooking oil. I use the income to buy other food and vegetables we don’t get that are crucial for my children,” she said.
She buys the clothing and shoes from wholesalers in Nairobi, and gets the jewellery including bracelets and necklaces from other refugee women artisans in the camps.
The women’s group agreed that each member will earn 6,000 shillings ($60) for one month of the year. Any extra profits will be invested back into the business. It is a humble beginning but it is paying off.
Fadumo, who fled to Kenya from conflict in Mogadishu in 2007, said she is now able to buy school uniforms, books and school stationery for her six school age children. She spends 5,500 shillings ($55) on the children’s education from her business earnings.
The women are all single mothers, some divorced and others widowed. Fadumo and most of the others earn extra by doing casual jobs such as washing clothes and fetching water to sell.
The monthly ration for a refugee consists of three kilos of sorghum and wheat, a kilo of beans, soap, cooking oil, and 200 shillings cash.
Many Fadumo say they have suffered from the reduction in rations in 2016, which occurred as pressure was increasing from the Kenyan government to close the camps in Dadaab. She and others used to sell a portion of their rations to buy other necessities. After the cuts, they could not do that anymore.
The small business is now making up for the shortfall the women’s families experience. The shop accountant, Anab Geddi, said their investment has grown within a year and is now worth the shop’s accountant, told Radio Ergo that their initial investment is now worth 170,000 shillings ($1,700 after just a year.
