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.
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:
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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?
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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?
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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.
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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 findings reflect both urban and camp-based markets. Exact sites to be confirmed with the consultant based on access and client density.
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Comparative sampling: at each site, sample comparatively on (i) refugee vs. host-community entrepreneurs and (ii) formalized vs. non-formalized businesses, disaggregated by gender given the concentration of women in Juba’s micro-enterprise sector and their disproportionate exposure to extortion.