About Us
We take Pride in our Slogan
Uplifting Refugee Businesses
Our Resounding Reason
KUZA is a social enterprise dedicated to uplifting and creating a supportive environment for refugee women entrepreneurs and refugee-led small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
This is done through mobilizing critical resources to support businesses that are built by refugees for refugees. KUZA’s task is to create a thriving environment where access to tailored financing, funding, and business financial literacy are not just aspirations but realities, enabling refugee women and SMEs to drive sustainable change within their communities through production and supply of goods and services.
KUZA offers a means for real self-reliance
Evidence shows that refugee businesses improve self-reliance, food security, and nutrition and enable access to other social services for women, children, and the general refugee population.
But we know that businesses can only thrive with the presence of a functional environment that enables business financing, funding, and access to business financial literacy. A functional business financing and funding environment is missing in the refugee settings in Uganda.
From Bidi Bidi to Nakivale Refugee Settlements, refugees face a business financing environment that is inaccessible, inflexible, and unsustainable. The question we should ask ourselves is, should this remain the case?
Our Mission
A business financing platform enabling refugee self-reliance by investing in ambitious refugee women businesses and refugee SMEs through enabling them access finance, funding, and business financial literacy training.
Our courageous vision
Uplifting refugee women-led businesses and building refugee SMEs through providing access to tailored funding and financial services.
The Distinctive Idea
We are supporting microbusinesses founded and run by refugee women. This on top of partnering with refugees to develop and finance SMEs that are run by refugees for refugees.
Our goal is to provide goods and services to severely underserved sectors within Uganda’s refugee communities. Our unique niche lies in the development and financing of SMEs, with the aim of creating sustainable jobs for the refugee youth.
KUZA is a business and social enterprise entirely focused on developing the private sector and a market-based approach that takes into account the unique situation of refugee economies.
We take risks because we know it’s worth it and it will pay off. We depend on comprehensive market research and use our lived experience plus insatiable vision for refugee self-reliance to achieve success.
Our approach to refugee women-led businesses is unique.
Why and how we work
Traditional humanitarian approaches have focused on training refugee women and encouraging them to start business without starting capital in most cases, and encouraging them to save through VSLAs. The question is save what and from where?
Our approach is different.
First of all, we never encourage anyone to start a microbusiness. You are either a self-starter or we have no business working with you. This is because our experience living in the refugee settlements and working there has taught us that that approach doesn’t work. Therefore, KUZA provides funding to micro-refugee women-owned businesses that are already operational and have a thorough understanding of the market dynamics.
The future we envision
As a social enterprise, we envision a future where refugee women and entrepreneurs have seamless access to financial services, leading dignified and thriving lives. We invite like-minded partners to join us in driving gender-sensitive business financing and uplifting refugee businesses in displacement settings across Uganda through financial inclusion and literacy. Together, we can achieve a lasting change.
Our objectives for refugee businesses
Our values
We’re a team that is rooted in lived experience of displacement—and that’s why we begin with sustainability.
WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT
Business-focused
Building and supporting business sustainability is what makes us different. Our sustainability is not what we put in reports for people to read. You can see it, touch it, and feel it. We are uplifting refugee businesses, and that makes us proud.
We begin from the bottom.
We make sure that we spend most of our funding and financing on refugees themselves. We are changing lives and helping our clients build dignity.
What makes us proud is being in the field.
Our Refugee Business Officers are our heroes. They do all the work and are always in the field working with our women to ensure that their businesses remain in operation. Our construction ensures our longevity.
Our Founding Story
From experiencing financial extortion to championing sustainable access to finance
The journey of KUZA began with a simple yet powerful truth: resilience and resourcefulness thrive even in the most challenging circumstances. Our founders grew up witnessing the extraordinary determination of refugee women who, with little more than grit and hope, built small businesses to feed their families and uplift their communities. These women sold staple foods in local markets, employed their neighbors, and turned meager earnings into lifelines, yet they faced impossible barriers when trying to access fair financing.
In refugee settlements, traditional banks see only risk, not potential. Without legal rights to own property or offer collateral, entrepreneurs are forced into the hands of predatory lenders charging crippling interest rates, often exceeding 120% annually. This injustice traps entire refugee business communities in cycles of debt and stunts growth.
KUZA was born to change this. Founded by leaders with firsthand experience of displacement, we understand both the struggles and the untapped potential of refugee entrepreneurs. We combine this lived expertise with market-driven strategies to create solutions that work.
Today, we stand with thousands of refugee female entrepreneurs who, like the women who inspired our founding, refuse to let displacement define their destiny.