What You Need To Know
The Amahoro Coalition has selected 41 entrepreneurs and social-change leaders for the fourth cohort of its Fellowship programme the only entrepreneurship fellowship in Africa designed specifically for refugee and displaced founders. DailyGuide Network Women make up the majority of the intake, accounting for 24 fellows, while 17 are men. The new cohort includes founders from 15 countries of origin across Africa and the Middle East who are now building businesses in 16 African host countries, with women accounting for 63% of the total selection. Ventures span agriculture, education, technology, manufacturing, health, climate action, creative industries, logistics, retail, and social inclusion.
DailyGuide Network The 12-month fellowship combines self-paced learning, live sessions, mentorship, peer learning, and direct engagement with investors, employers, and private-sector leaders. Each Fellow can access funding of up to US$160,000 — described as the highest ticket investment available anywhere in the world for refugee-led enterprises. AmeyawDebrah The Fellowship is supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Mastercard Foundation. Selected entrepreneurs originate from 15 countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, and Syria.
Implications
The 63% female composition of Cohort Four is not incidental — it reflects a deliberate policy posture within the Amahoro Coalition that recognises women as the primary economic actors within displaced communities across Africa. For the broader ecosystem of women’s entrepreneurship on the continent, the significance is structural: a fellowship explicitly built around displacement is producing a gender composition that most mainstream accelerators and startup programmes have failed to achieve even without those structural barriers.
Data from the Amahoro Coalition shows that enterprises supported through the first three cohorts grew their combined workforce from 428 employees before joining the fellowship to more than 2,240 jobs after receiving support. In addition, participating businesses attracted over $2.4 million in direct funding through the programme and leveraged a further $4.1 million from external investors.
Those numbers establish a clear investment case. Refugee women entrepreneurs, given institutional access and capital, are generating employment at a scale that outperforms the narrative of dependency that typically frames displaced populations in policy discourse. For governments, development finance institutions, and private sector actors operating across East, West, and Central Africa, the Amahoro model presents a replicable evidence base for inclusive enterprise development.
Background Story
The Amahoro Fellowship is delivered by the Amahoro Coalition, whose mandate is to mobilise Africa’s private sector to unlock economic opportunities for forcibly displaced people. Through partnerships, investment, employment pathways, and entrepreneurship support, the Coalition works to position displaced people as contributors to economic growth and development across the continent. Opportunities for Youth Across its first three cohorts, the programme has supported 88 refugee and displaced entrepreneurs operating in 15 African countries.
AmeyawDebrah The fourth cohort announcement marks a sustained expansion in both geographic coverage and gender representation, with women’s share rising to 63% a figure that stands in sharp contrast to the marginalised participation of refugee women in formal economic programmes across the region. The fellowship’s institutional architecture draws on a partnership between development finance and private sector involvement. Global logistics firm PSA BDP also contributes mentorship and industry expertise to help entrepreneurs strengthen their enterprises.
New Vision Patricia Barandun, head of section for migration and forced displacement at the SDC, noted that the announcement falls in the 75th anniversary year of the 1951 Refugee Convention the United Nations treaty that established core legal protections for refugees.
Insight
“Cohort 4 represents a group of exceptional leaders who are not waiting for change but are creating it through generating jobs, building ventures, and solving some of Africa’s most pressing challenges from within their communities,” said Julia Oduol, Principal Strategy Custodian for the Amahoro Fellowship. DailyGuide Network That framing is deliberate and carries policy weight. The dominant discourse around refugee populations in Africa has historically centred on humanitarian relief rather than economic agency. The Amahoro model inverts that framework — treating displaced founders not as recipients of charity but as investable entrepreneurs operating within active markets.
The capital access dimension is the programme’s most operationally significant feature. At US$160,000 per fellow, the funding ceiling places Amahoro significantly above what most early-stage African startups receive at seed level refugee-led or otherwise. The fact that women represent the majority of beneficiaries in this cohort reconfigures what “women’s entrepreneurship support” looks like in practice: not micro-grants or training stipends, but growth-stage capital deployed at scale.
Research from Inkomoko’s work across Rwanda and Uganda consistently shows that women entrepreneurs operating in displaced settings are not asking for assistance they are asking for opportunity. When given structured access, they build enterprises, hire staff, and expand into new markets. Millercenterglobal Amahoro’s fourth cohort is the most recent and most quantifiable confirmation of that dynamic.
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