Our Recommendation
BOMA is a high‑performing, graduation‑model organization with strong evidence of improving assets, savings, income, and food security for ultra‑poor households in Africa’s drylands, including credible counterfactual data. For funders focused on women’s economic empowerment, resilience to climate shocks, and right‑sized rigorous evidence, BOMA is an excellent candidate and could serve as a learning partner for scaling graduation approaches through governments and multilaterals.
BOMA's Fierce Certification score is 120/100 based on our criteria:
✔ Has Ultimate Outcome Goals (50 pts)
✔ Measures Intermediate Outcomes (10 pts)
✔ Measures Ultimate Outcomes (15 pts)
✔ Shows Continual Learning & Adaptation (25 pts)
✔ Measures Intermediate Counterfactual (10 pts)
✔ Measures Ultimate Counterfactual (10 pts)
The Social Problem
BOMA targets extreme poverty and high vulnerability to climate shocks among pastoralist and rural families in Africa’s drylands. In these arid and semi‑arid regions, recurrent droughts and limited livelihood options leave women and their households with very low incomes, frequent food shortages, and almost no savings or assets. This combination drives repeated humanitarian crises, entrenched gender inequality, and inter‑generational poverty, as families struggle to feed children, pay school fees, and survive health or climate shocks.
The Solution
BOMA’s core solution is the Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP), a time‑bound graduation model that equips ultra‑poor women (and other vulnerable groups in newer programmes) with cash or asset transfers, training, mentoring, and savings‑group membership to start sustainable micro‑businesses. Participants are selected through a multi‑stage targeting process, grouped into small business teams, and supported by local mentors over about two years to build financial skills, grow enterprises, accumulate savings, and improve household decision‑making. The approach is being adapted and scaled to youth, refugees, IDPs, and multiple countries, and increasingly implemented in partnership with governments to move large numbers of households out of extreme poverty and dependence on aid.
Key Outputs
BOMA reports several important outputs:
- Participants and households reached: since 2009, more than 170,000–203,000 participants have been supported, impacting about 1–1.3 million household members across Africa’s drylands.
- Businesses launched: participants have started over 50,000 small businesses, diversifying incomes away from risky single‑source livelihoods.
- Savings groups established: thousands of savings groups (including Kuza Jamii VSLAs) have been formed, with cumulative savings of over KSh 25.5 million for one subset of groups.
- Geographic footprint: BOMA’s model has expanded from northern Kenya to at least six countries across Africa’s drylands, including refugee and conflict‑affected contexts.
- Data and monitoring infrastructure: a rigorous data‑management framework with baseline and endline surveys, graduation criteria, and continuous monitoring underpins program decisions.
These outputs indicate a mature programme operating at substantial scale with embedded measurement systems.
Key Intermediate Outcomes
Intermediate outcomes where BOMA has strong evidence include:
- Business assets and savings: in one set of results, graduates had 324% more business assets and 509% more cash savings than non‑participants in comparison communities, demonstrating substantial asset accumulation and financial buffers.
- Household economic resilience: participants show higher savings, participation in savings groups, and diversified livelihoods, which BOMA uses as proxies for resilience to shocks.
- Livelihood diversification and entrepreneurship: more than 50,000 businesses launched by 170,000 participants reflect a shift from single‑source livelihoods to more diversified income portfolios.
These are supported by quasi‑experimental counterfactual comparisons between participants and non‑participants, giving BOMA unusually strong evidence among graduation programs.
Key Ultimate Outcomes
BOMA has credible, if still evolving, ultimate‑outcome evidence:
- Household income: graduates have on average 32% more total annual household cash income than non‑participants in communities without REAP, directly addressing extreme poverty.
- Food security: BOMA tracks food‑security indicators and reports improved ability to afford and access sufficient food, with analyses comparing participants and non‑participants and examining correlations between food insecurity and mental health.
- Education and health spending: participants report increased ability to pay school fees and medical costs, though these outcomes are more often described than fully quantified in publicly available summaries.
- Mental health: the 2025 Impact Report highlights significant correlations between mental‑health indicators and food‑security levels, and notes improvements in mental‑health scores among participants.
At least for income and food security, these ultimate outcomes are measured with explicit counterfactual comparisons.
Continual Learning & Adaptation
BOMA demonstrates several hallmarks of a learning organization:
- Revised theory of change and strategy: its 2022–2027 Breakthrough Strategic Plan sets out a revised theory of change, expanding focus beyond rural women to youth, refugees, and IDPs, and foregrounding resilience to climate, conflict, and health shocks.
- Data‑driven adaptation: BOMA emphasises data management as core to its work, using baseline/endline surveys and disaggregated analysis by gender, age, and location to refine program design and targeting.
- Scaling and model adaptation: it is adapting the REAP model for different populations and geographies, and partnering with governments and international agencies to integrate graduation approaches into larger systems.
- Impact reports and learning products: periodic impact reports (including the 2025 highlights) explicitly discuss what continues to work, lessons learned, and how evidence informs the next phase of programming.
This combination of revised theory of change, rigorous monitoring with counterfactual components, and strategic adaptation positions BOMA as one of the more evidence‑driven poverty‑graduation organizations currently operating.
Written by
