The BOMA Project, Inc.

Founded 15 years ago to eliminate extreme poverty amongst pastoralist women in Kenya, BOMA is celebrating our history and the over 250,000 people whose lives have been transformed with an ambitious breakthrough strategy. BOMA’s mission is to provide the people & governments of Africa’s drylands with economic inclusion programs that increase resilience to multiple crises. Ultimately, our goal is to end extreme poverty in Africa’s drylands.

BOMA empowers women in the drylands of Africa to establish sustainable livelihoods, build resilient families, graduate from extreme poverty, and catalyze change in their rural communities. BOMA's Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP) is a data driven, cost-effective poverty graduation model tailored to the specific needs and challenges of women in the drylands of Africa. The “graduation into sustainable livelihoods approach” consists of a sequenced, time-bound set of interventions aimed at holistically addressing the multidimensional needs faced by the poorest, most vulnerable households.

As one of the few organizations committed to working with extremely poor populations in the drylands of Africa, BOMA is solving one of the world’s hardest problems in one of the most challenging “last mile” places on the planet. BOMA is directly contributing to the achievement of the SDGs 1, 2 and 5 by 2030.

During the next six years, BOMA seeks to catalyze the $10 million unrestricted gift from Mackenzie Scott and Dan Jewett into a minimum of $90 million to reach three million people in the ASALs of Africa. Five strategic initiatives are introduced to pave the way forward for the organization’s scale and impact ambitions in the next six years.

1. Adapting to new populations: BOMA’s focus is evolving to emphasize resilience-building programs for vulnerable populations including women, youth, populations impacted by climate change & COVID-19, refugees, and internally displaced persons (IDP’s).

2. Expanding to new countries: BOMA is expanding to new countries through Direct Implementation, Government Adoption & Strategic Partnerships. Targeted countries include Nigeria, Chad, Ethiopia, and Burkina Faso with strong criteria and rigorous due diligence.

3. Honing REAP for scale: To expand at this scale, BOMA will place a new emphasis on Government Policy Influence, outline a structure for Multi-Country Expansion, and pursue the development of a Center for Poverty Graduation and Resiliency Excellence.

4. Building a delivery structure: BOMA’s model will be optimized for adaptability and affordability. Areas of focus include reducing per-participant costs, diversifying financial & market linkages, bolstering research & evaluation, and continued innovation through Performance Insights.

5: Inviting funders to support our work: Mackenzie Scott’s $10 million investment offers an unprecedented opportunity to invite support from funders. To reach 3 million by 2027, BOMA will need at least $90 million for program delivery, structural capacity costs, and breakthrough investments.

BOMA’s revised theory of change expands BOMA’s focus beyond rural women to include youth, refugees, and IDPs; acknowledges government as a critical partner; and centers around increasing resiliency from climate, conflict, and health shocks.

BOMA has helped over 250,000 women and children in the drylands of Africa graduate from poverty. BOMA participants have launched more than 12,000 new businesses and established over 2,000 savings groups. Furthermore, BOMA’s programs have shown high efficacy in both the short term and long term. BOMA stands out for its laser-like focus on last mile populations of the ASALs of Africa who are most at risk to shocks from climate change and COVID-19, tech savvy and data driven approach, impressive graduation rate as compared to peers, and local structure based in Kenya where up to 99% of BOMA’s team is local with a management structure that prioritizes local leadership.

BOMA has been working towards a regional expansion strategy for the last few years. Piloted efforts in Uganda and Chad have been mostly opportunistic moves based off pre-existing relationships and available funding. BOMA has learned that REAP can be modified and implemented in other country contexts and that success depends on strong technical assistance and relationship-building with partners. This strategic plan includes a deliberate effort of expansion into nine countries to meet the urgent needs of multiple crises in the ASAL areas of Africa.

Aggressive country expansion, addressing the needs of new audiences, and pivoting towards resilience requires BOMA’s graduation model be adapted further for multiple audiences and affordability. BOMA will have graduation models for Refugees & IDPs, youth, and other audiences and objectives (e.g., reproductive health) in markedly different country settings. The ability to adapt the model appropriately must become a strong competency for the organization. In addition, as BOMA dramatically increases coverage in existing countries (e.g., Kenya) it will be necessary to think about financial and market linkage diversity so as not to saturate existing businesses. Going forward, BOMA will need to boost its technical capacity to manage high frequency changes to the graduation model, financial/market linkages, and model costs.

BOMA’s current collaboration with Rippleworks7 will help build a flexible framework to adapt the graduation model and Performance Insights to other populations (such as youth and IDPs). Furthermore, it will help develop artificial intelligence and trend identification capabilities to make BOMA’s model and operations more efficient.

Since 2009, BOMA has lifted more than 278,802 women and children out of extreme poverty, enrolled more than 46,467 women into our REAP program, impacted more than of 232,335 children, launched more than 15, 739 businesses and 2,296 savings groups.

Through REAP, women are able to:
- Access capital
- Develop financial and life skills
- Establish sustainable businesses
- Build savings
- Access markets and financial services
- Graduate themselves and their families from extreme poverty
- Build their life-skills & social capital, and take on leadership role in their communities

When women have access to and control over resources, they invest in their families in a way that breaks the intergenerational cycle of extreme poverty.

After REAP, women experience:
- 29.64% increase in average household income
- 1,960.61% increase in savings
- 92.55% of participants have access to at least two sources of income
- 99.21% belong to a registered savings group and have access to credit
- 99.34% of participants reported household members had two meals a day in the past week
- 98.94% reported that no child went to bed without an evening meal in the past week