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.
1. BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE
Since 2022, Inkomoko Ethiopia has delivered an integrated business growth package — cohort training, one-on-one BDS, market linkage, and concessional loans — to refugee-owned micro and small enterprises (MSEs) across seven locations. This work is grounded in Ethiopia's Refugee Proclamation No. 1110/2019, which grants refugees the right to engage in self-employment, and is aligned with UNHCR's Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework.
In recent operational cycles, program teams have encountered a consistent and worsening challenge: difficulty recruiting new clients — both existing business owners and idea-stage entrepreneurs — into cohort-based intake. Specific symptoms include exhausted referral networks, repeat identification of the same individuals across recruitment cycles, declining attendance at outreach events, and shrinking pools of first-time applicants. If left unaddressed, this trend threatens program and operation continuity in existing locations of operation.
This Terms of Reference commissions a formal Market Saturation Assessment to determine — with rigorous, triangulated evidence — the total addressable market of eligible refugee-owned MSEs in each location, how much of that market Inkomoko has already reached, and how many years of viable intake remain. Findings will directly inform strategic decisions on program continuation, service model adaptation, geographic expansion, or phased exit.
2. MARKET SATURATION: DEFINITION AND INDEX
A market saturation assessment is a structured analytical exercise that measures the extent to which a service provider has penetrated its Total Addressable Market (TAM) within a defined geographic and demographic boundary. The central question is: of all eligible potential clients in a location, what proportion has Inkomoko already served?
This approach is well-established in development programming. Comparable frameworks include: UNHCR Livelihoods and Economic Inclusion (LEI) Assessments, which estimate viable self-employment opportunities in refugee-hosting areas; IFC MSME Market Sizing methodology, which calculates the gap between potential and actual service reach; IRC Airbel Market Opportunity Mapping, which scores markets by saturation level and growth potential;…