Samuel Binja is the founder of the Kalobeyei Initiative for Better Life (KI4BLI) and Light Academy, advancing quality education for refugee and host communities. His work focuses on community driven learning, youth economic empowerment, teacher support, and education innovation.
As a young boy, I dreamt of leading large companies, creating jobs, and building a life that would make my parents proud. Success, to me, meant wealth, earned through intelligence, education, and hard work. In 2015, when I graduated from Bangu Institute, I was one of only five students in my cohort to complete secondary school. I remember my father in tears, surrounded by parents, teachers, and community members, celebrating our achievement. In that moment, I felt my dreams were within reach.
But life took a different turn.
Two years later, I became one of millions of displaced people. That transition from an aspiring business leader to refugee reshaped my trajectory entirely. Over the past eight years, I have lived and worked within the humanitarian system in Kakuma, both as a beneficiary and a frontline service provider. This dual perspective has revealed a difficult truth: much of humanitarian programming lacks intentionality. It often addresses symptoms while knowingly ignoring root causes.
This raises a critical and uncomfortable question: why do we continue investing in projects that have consistently failed to deliver sustainable impact?
The Illusion of Response
Kakuma Refugee Camp, like many protracted displacement settings, is no longer considered an emergency zone. Yet it continues to host refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, and other countries affected by conflict, climate shocks, and instability. Despite this reality, humanitarian responses often remain structured as short-term interventions, disconnected from long-term development needs.
Programs are designed, funded, and implemented in cycles that prioritise activity over impact. The result is a system that sustains itself rather than the communities it intends to serve.
The Localisation Paradox
As global funding declines, exacerbated by shifting geopolitical priorities and the withdrawal of major donors such as USAID, international NGOs are increasingly turning toward refugee-led organisations (RLOs). On the surface, this shift aligns with the global commitment to localisation, but in practice, the partnerships raise another question: are they truly meaningful?
Too often, RLOs are engaged in the final months of multi-year funding cycles, sometimes as late as six months before project closure. Instead of being treated as equal partners, they are positioned as last-mile implementers, expected to deliver results under tight timelines and with limited resources.
This approach has serious consequences. It overburdens already fragile organisations and disrupts their growth. Instead of strengthening their financial systems, human resources, and institutional capacity, it places them under pressure to perform without adequate support.
Even more concerning is the perception that emerges when refugee-led actors begin to demonstrate competence and independence. Confidence is misinterpreted as ego. Ambition is labelled as greed. In some cases, organisations face subtle threats or reputational risks simply for asserting their value.
Planning Without Practice
Localisation has become a popular agenda in global humanitarian discourse. Donors and foundations pledge millions of dollars to support local actors, often discussed in high-level meetings and strategic documents. Yet this commitment rarely translates into practice on the ground. There is a fundamental disconnect between what is planned in conference rooms and what is implemented in communities like Kakuma.
Refugees themselves remain the most immediate and informed responders to their own needs. They understand the context, the culture, and the gaps in service delivery better than any external actor. Yet the systems designed to support them often exclude them from decision-making.
Even more troubling is the role of reporting and compliance structures. In many cases, these systems are not designed to strengthen local ownership but to protect and sustain existing institutional frameworks. They create an illusion of accountability while limiting genuine impact.
It is not uncommon for a donor to fund a project intended to reach 10,000 beneficiaries, only to visit two or three individuals during a monitoring trip and validate the success of the entire intervention. This disconnect between reporting and reality highlights a deeper issue: performance is measured by outputs, not outcomes.
Rethinking Humanitarian Intentionality
The challenge facing humanitarian response in Kakuma is not a lack of resources, knowledge, or even goodwill. It is a lack of intentionality. Intentional programming requires more than delivering services; it demands a commitment to addressing root causes, building local capacity, and transferring power to affected communities. It means designing programs that outlast funding cycles and investing in systems that enable long-term resilience.
For refugee-led organisations, this would mean being engaged from the outset, not as deadline implementers, but as co-creators. It would require flexible funding that supports institutional growth, not just project delivery. And it would demand a shift in mindset, from viewing refugees as beneficiaries to recognising them as leaders, innovators, and partners.
A Call for Accountability
If the humanitarian sector is to remain relevant in protracted displacement contexts like Kakuma, it must confront its own contradictions. It must ask hard questions about what success truly looks like and who defines it. Continuing to invest in programs that fail to produce lasting change is not just inefficient; it is unjust.
“The future of humanitarian response depends on the courage to rethink its foundations. And that begins with a simple but powerful shift: from acting with urgency to acting with intention.” Samuel Binja, Entrepreneur, Program designer, and Director, Kalobeyei Initiative