People
on the Move

Economic exclusion across displaced and mobile populations is driven by a single structural constraint that persists across geographies and legal categories. Individuals who move across borders or within countries lose continuity of identity systems and address verification, which removes their ability to participate in financial systems, labour markets, and climate-linked income streams.

Kilimora positions this constraint within its broader mandate of aligning distributed activity with verifiable economic value, extending its core infrastructure from smallholder systems to populations affected by displacement and migration. This strategy defines how Kilimora integrates people on the move into its existing climate finance, research, and technology architecture — ensuring that displacement does not interrupt participation in value creation systems.

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, displacement and migration intersect with existing structural inefficiencies in financial and climate systems. Over 5.2 million refugees and more than 5.6 million internally displaced persons operate outside formal financial infrastructure, while millions of migrants remain economically active without institutional recognition.

At the same time, over 70 percent of smallholder farmers remain excluded from climate finance flows, despite contributing directly to environmental outcomes. These conditions represent a single system failure. Individuals generate economic and environmental value, yet lack the infrastructure required to convert that value into recognised financial outcomes.

The absence of verifiable identity and address systems prevents participation in mobile money ecosystems, blocks access to employment systems, and limits integration into climate finance markets. Kilimora treats both constraints — financial exclusion and climate finance gaps — as manifestations of the same structural inefficiency.

Kilimora's intervention extends its core system architecture into displacement contexts by establishing verifiable identity and addressing infrastructure that functions independently of physical location stability. Virtual addressing systems create persistent identifiers linked to individuals, enabling compliance with Know Your Customer requirements and integration into financial systems.

This infrastructure operates through low-cost, offline-capable interfaces aligned with Kilimora's technology architecture principles — ensuring functionality across low-connectivity environments that affect over 60 percent of rural and displaced populations.

How the System Works

• Virtual addressing: Persistent digital identifiers linked to individuals regardless of physical location changes
• KYC compliance: Integration with regulatory Know Your Customer requirements enabling mobile money account opening without traditional documentation
• Mobile money integration: Account opening, payment receipt, and transaction tracking without reliance on traditional documentation pathways
• MRV linkage: The addressing layer is directly connected to Kilimora's measurement and verification systems, capturing individual participation in environmental activities
• Value attribution: Individual-level attribution ensuring displaced populations are integrated into the same verifiable economic systems as smallholder producers

Climate finance serves as the primary entry point for large-scale integration of displaced populations into formal financial systems. Environmental restoration programmes — including agroforestry, soil conservation, and land rehabilitation — employ diverse participant groups across host and displaced communities. These programmes generate measurable environmental outcomes that align with Kilimora's verification and monetisation systems.

Kilimora integrates digital payment infrastructure into these programmes, transitioning from cash-based disbursement to mobile money systems enabled by verifiable addressing. This transition reduces operational cost, increases transparency, and enables direct financial flows to individuals. Participants receiving digital payments gain access to broader financial ecosystems — including savings, credit, and insurance — creating a compounding effect where initial inclusion through climate finance expands into sustained economic participation.

Payment Volume Trajectory

Kilimora's delivery model follows a structured sequence aligned with its broader system design, ensuring each integration step builds on the previous and generates verifiable data for the next.

The People on the Move Strategy is integrated within Kilimora's five-pillar execution framework. Each pillar extends into displacement contexts with specific quantified targets and operational standards.

Kilimora defines clear targets across displaced and mobile populations within a three-year execution horizon, aligned with its broader objective of facilitating over USD 25 million in climate-linked revenue streams within five years.

Population Registration Targets

Climate Finance Integration Targets

• 17 programme partnerships across environmental restoration, agroforestry, soil conservation, and land rehabilitation
• 48,000 individuals receiving climate-linked digital payments — drawn from the 137,000 registered population
• KES 1.7 billion cumulative digitised payment volume over the three-year horizon (KES 288M → KES 648M → KES 792M)
• Aligned with Kilimora's five-year target of USD 25 million+ in facilitated climate-linked revenue streams
• MRV accuracy maintained above 95 percent across all displacement and migration contexts

The strategy operates as an integrated system where each component reinforces the others. This feedback loop mirrors Kilimora's core execution logic across its smallholder and climate finance programmes — applied here to displacement contexts.

Kilimora's People on the Move Strategy extends its core mandate into displacement contexts by addressing a fundamental infrastructure gap that prevents economic participation. The organisation creates measurable pathways from exclusion to participation by integrating identity systems, financial access, and climate finance within a unified architecture.

Execution is defined through quantified targets, institutional partnerships, and system-level integration. The outcome is a scalable model where displaced and mobile populations are incorporated into formal economic systems, enabling them to generate, verify, and capture value within climate and financial markets.