Emergency Market Mapping and Analysis Toolkit

In the second half of 2011, Kenya witnessed one of the worst droughts in the recent past, which was exacerbated by high inflation, rising fuel prices and a weakened economy. Though poor households in Nairobi's informal settlements are vulnerable during emergencies, they are often ignored by the government and relief agencies. Oxfam conducted this market baseline assessment to identify the crisis' impacts on the maize, water and credit markets. To help ensure adequate maize consumption by vulnerable households, this assessment suggests cash grants for small shops, posho mills and food vendors, cooked food vouchers for vulnerable households, cash grants for very poor households (with in-kind food aid as a fallback) and advocacy for social protection programming and increased transparency regarding maize market activity. For the water market system, the report recommends increasing the water supply, improving household-level water storage, improving household purchasing power, creating more CBOs, pressuring NWSC to enforce its rules and regulations, offering cash grants and vouchers, water tankering, providing water treatment options and constructing pipelines from boreholes to water vendors. For the credit market system, this assessment recommends advocating for safety nets and ID registration for poor households, linking with institutions that could provide grants for the poor, promoting savings groups and providing cash grants to poor households and small traders.

The Syrian conflict and violent conflicts within Iraq have related in the movement of almost one million Syrian refugees and Iraqi IDPs into Kurdistan in recent years. The Danish Refugee Council commissioned this EMMA in order to assess opportunities in livelihoods generation and access to income for Syrian refugees and IDPs living in and outside of camps, in order to inform its livelihoods programming. The influx of refugees and IDPs has increased pressure on the labor market in KRI. This is exacerbated by a drop in demand for construction due to conflicts between the KRI and the central Iraqi governments and a drop in demand for hospitality services due to insecurity in the region and the relative economic standstill. Though many NGOs are offering humanitarian assistance and cash for work programs to the target population, these interventions are of relatively low economic benefit to beneficiaries and are not a long-term solution. This assessment recommends the following responses in order to improve access to labor markets and income generation for Syrian refugees and Iraqi IDPs: improved efforts to target IDPs and refugees in non-camp settings with humanitarian assistance; raising the target groups' awareness of locally available jobs and building their capacity to find decent jobs; promoting job placement mechanisms; partnering with private sector actors to invest in potentially valuable value chains; promoting innovation in small enterprises; conducting market analyses on access to credit for small businesses and on agriculture and related labor; and advocating with humanitarian actors for a phase-out of short-term interventions.

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