Our Approach
Patapia is refugee women focused and dedicated to empowering refugees to become successful entrepreneurs by providing a flexible loan product with longer repayment periods. We understand that many refugees face significant barriers in accessing education and employment opportunities, and we believe that entrepreneurship can be a powerful tool for promoting economic self-reliance and reducing dependency on aid.
Patapia Microfinance
1 in 2 refugee households is women-led, who struggle daily to provide the basic needs for their families. With many depending on aid, entrepreneurship provides a possible way out but many lack the skills to start and run their own businesses.
The Patapia Microfinance is a financing vehicle dedicated to empowering refugees to become entrepreneurs. Our loans give refugees the capacity to start high-revenue potential businesses and repay through flexible periods. Repayments allow us to build a movement where refugees are self-sustainable.
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And group financing encourages peer support, co-creation and collaboration.
In addition to providing access to funding, we also offer financial literacy and access to savings accounts to help refugees develop the skills, knowledge, and resources they need to succeed as entrepreneurs and prepare for uncertainties. We believe that by providing a comprehensive support package, we can help refugees overcome the barriers they face and achieve their full potential as entrepreneurs and productive members of the community.
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Patapia is committed to promoting gender equality and social justice, and we believe that empowering refugees with a focus on the women to become entrepreneurs is an important step toward achieving these goals. We work closely with local communities, NGOs, and government agencies to ensure that our programs are responsive to the needs of refugees and that we are contributing to the broader development goals of the communities where we work.
Digitizing the refugee banking experience
We digitize the banking experience for refugees through cloud-based banking software. A partnership with Ensibuuko, a digital platform to access the services they need.
The software enables women to save, borrow and make deposits anytime, anywhere with even just a feature phone. Learn about the software here
Many refugee entrepreneurs fail due to a lack of a support network and entrepreneurship support. While financing is a critical gap, business development support is a key ingredient to proper repayment.
And this is what we strive towards.
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Our programming is designed in two key categories; the Patapia Incubator designed for refugees in business and the Komaa Project for those in agribusiness.
Providing a pipeline for refugee investing
Patapia Inn0V8
Patapia Inn0V8 is a transformative program designed to empower refugees, with a particular focus on women and girls, through entrepreneurship. The program is structured into two key components: the "Start and Grow your Business" program and a comprehensive incubation program for aspiring social entrepreneurs.

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"Start and Grow your Business" Program
Our one-week training course equips refugee women with essential knowledge and skills in generating business ideas, creating business models, developing mini business plans, and enhancing financial literacy. Each day is dedicated to a specific topic, including identifying market opportunities, crafting unique value propositions, and establishing actionable strategies to kickstart their entrepreneurial journey. This program is specifically tailored to meet the needs of illiterate refugee women, ensuring that cultural and communication barriers are addressed while engaging participants in a sensitive and inclusive manner.

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The Patapia Incubator
The Patapia Incubator is a comprehensive 5-month program designed for previously financed refugee women and youth who aspire to transition their businesses into social enterprises.
Participants are mentored by experienced professionals who guide them through three distinct stages of our empowerment framework:

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Seed Stage: This initial phase focuses on developing scholars' personality traits, leadership skills, and knowledge. Scholars discover their talents, passions, and purpose while acquiring essential leadership habits.
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Emerging Stage: Participants engage in a core ideation process where they identify key community challenges and develop innovative solutions. Personal growth continues as scholars test their ideas and acquire the necessary skills to implement their solutions effectively.
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Concentration Stage: In this final stage, scholars bring their products or solutions to the market. Through targeted sessions and mentorship, scholar teams work towards establishing a Problem-Solution Fit. By the conclusion of this stage, scholars graduate from the program equipped to manage their own businesses successfully.

At Patapia Inn0V8, we are committed to nurturing entrepreneurial talent, fostering innovation, and empowering refugee women and youth to create sustainable social impact within their communities
The Komaa Project
Komaa is a Kiswahili word that means grow. And growing is what we target for refugee women and girls.
The Patapia Komaa Project empowers refugee women living in refugee settlements by training and financing them to establish communal farms, focusing on incorporating regenerative farming practices and increasing yields.
Agriculture provides better opportunities for the women in the refugee settlements but while this is the case, the women are excluded from fully engaging in agriculture. In the camps, refugees are only given a cultivation plot measuring 50m by 50m, barely enough to produce. In addition, they lack access to inputs and the knowledge to grow more with changing environmental conditions and fair price markets for their produce. Many therefore only grow food for home use and the few that sell only sell to the middlemen giving lower returns and subsequently discouraging many.
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The project encompasses several vital steps. Through a community agent network, refugee women create farmer groups. The agents mobilize and the refugee women establish farmer groups that comprise both refugees and members of the host communities. This will not only enhance integration but also encourage interactions with the host community.
The farmer groups receive training and capacity building in various aspects of farming, including crop selection, land preparation, planting, harvesting, and post-harvest handling. Moreover, the women will undergo training in regenerative farming practices such as crop rotation, intercropping, and composting.
The farmer groups apply for financing from the Patapia Microfinance averaging $500-2000 per group to start a communal farm. The financing will cover the costs of renting land from the host community and purchasing seeds, tools, and other inputs needed for farming. This financing will be offered as a loan for which the women involved will make repayments over time.
Finally, upon harvesting, the farmer groups aggregate harvests and are linked to bulk buyers are fair trade prices. This ensures that the women can grow and sell more, and thus provide sufficiently for their families.