ABOUT INKOMOKO
Inkomoko supports entrepreneurs to grow their businesses in order to improve livelihoods, create jobs, and help communities thrive.
In 2026, Inkomoko was listed by the Financial Times as the 5th fastest-growing company in Africa,supporting entrepreneurs across East and Central Africa to grow thriving businesses and build inclusive, resilient economies.
Founded in 2012, Inkomoko has worked with more than 120,000 entrepreneurs, including thousands of refugee entrepreneurs. Inkomoko provides a combination of training, consulting, access to finance,and market-level systems change. We are the largest investor to refugee entrepreneurs in Africa.
Inkomoko has 1,000+ staff in 50 offices across Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Sudan.Through Inkomoko’s 2030 strategic plan, we are adding 3 additional countries to serve more than 550,000 entrepreneurs and growing our $30M loan fund to impact 7M lives.
INKOMOKO VALUES
All staff at Inkomoko are connected to a shared set of organizational values:
• Purpose: be solutions-oriented, produce high-quality work, and be a global leader.
• Achievement: push yourself to reach beyond what you previously thought possible.
• Improvement: be humble, engage in continuous growth through open & accurate feedback
• Bravery: willing to take risks, create a safe space for others, be compassionate, and inclusive.
• We Eat Goat: we celebrate success and support each other in hard times. We do this work together in the spirit of turikumwe, tuko pamoja, abren nen, Kula na sawa, On est ensemble.
Inkomoko is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. Refugees, women, and persons who reflect the diverse communities we serve are strongly encouraged to apply.
ABOUT THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS STUDY
Background and Project Description
South Sudan hosts more than 500,000 refugees and 2 million internally displaced people, and has adopted a National Durable Solutions Strategy to promote sustainable livelihoods and economic inclusion. Inkomoko believes that entrepreneurship, financial inclusion, and private sector development are key to achieving long-term self-reliance for displacement-affected populations.
Micro and small businesses – roadside vendors, boda-boda riders, retail kiosks, tailors – are a core survival mechanism for refugee and host-community families in South Sudan. These businesses are widely reported to face multiple, overlapping formal and informal charges: municipal levies, market dues, sanitation and security contributions, business-council fees, and checkpoint-related extortion, often un-receipted, inconsistently enforced, and backed by harassment, goods confiscation or forced closure for non-payment. This pattern is widely recognised internally but has never been systematically documented or quantified, nor is it clear which specific charges drive the burden most, or why it persists.
A related, deeper gap sits upstream: it is unclear whether the real barrier is formalization itself, or whether it starts with access to an accepted ID, since refugee ID is not recognized in the national system and this affects eligibility for business registration, bank accounts and registered SIM cards. Given the sensitivity of the information involved – including extortion and checkpoint payments – this assignment requires an external consultant with established trust and access in South Sudan, as clients are unlikely to disclose this level of detail to Inkomoko staff or a research fellow.
Background on the context:
Globally, over 120 million people are forcibly displaced, including 44 million in Africa, making forced displacement one of the world's most pressing development challenges. South Sudan hosts more than 500,000 refugees and 2 million internally displaced people (IDPs) and has adopted a National Durable Solutions Strategy to promote sustainable livelihoods and economic inclusion. Inkomoko believes that entrepreneurship, financial inclusion, and private sector development are key to achieving long-term self-reliance for displaced populations. Since its establishment in 2012, Inkomoko has supported over 100,000 MSMEs across five African countries, invested USD 25 million in affordable finance, generated USD 60 million in client revenue, and created 93,000 jobs. Since launching operations in South Sudan in 2023, Inkomoko has expanded its services to entrepreneurs in Juba, Gorom, Maban, and Mangala, supporting the economic integration of refugees, IDPs, and host communities.
Purpose of the Study.
This study will systematically document and quantify the true cost of doing business – formal and informal – for refugee and host-community entrepreneurs in South Sudan, and test whether business formalization delivers real returns. Specifically, the study will answer three linked questions:
• Documentation access – What does it actually take, in process, cost and time, for a refugee or host-community entrepreneur to obtain an accepted ID and a registered SIM card, and how far does the lack of an accepted refugee ID limit their ability to formalize a business or open a bank account?
• True cost of doing business – What is the official schedule of taxes and fees a business is legally required to pay, versus what entrepreneurs actually pay once informal levies, checkpoint payments and inflated municipal charges are added, and how does this differ by refugee/host-community status and by formalization status?
• Does formalization pay off? – Testing the hypothesis that formalized businesses still face many of the same informal charges, but grow faster, earn more, and operate with more confidence than unformalized peers, to assess whether formalization is a genuine route out of the informal-tax trap or an added layer of cost with no real protection.
Scope of the Study.
• Geographic scope: Juba (urban market, business-council and checkpoint dynamics) plus at least one refugee-hosting location outside Juba – e.g. Gorom settlement and/or the Maban camps – so f