In 2025, Oxfam in Algeria launched a new strategic planning process to guide its work with Sahrawi refugees over the period 2026–2030. Oxfam has worked in the Sahrawi camps since 1975, combining humanitarian assistance with resilience programming, advocacy, and capacity development in a context of protracted displacement and chronic underfunding.
Oxfam commissioned Integrated Risk Management Associates (IRMA) to facilitate this process, ensuring that the new country strategy was firmly grounded in evidence and co‑created with key stakeholders. IRMA’s assignment focused on analysing the external and internal context, identifying strategic opportunities and risks, and supporting the formulation of a clear vision, country goals, and strategic orientations for the 2026–2030 period.
IRMA used a mixed‑methods approach, including a desk review of 127 internal and external documents coded in MAXQDA, 17 interviews with Oxfam staff across Algeria, the MENA region, Oxfam Belgium and global teams, and 9 interviews with Sahrawi authorities, UN agencies and donors, complemented by two focus group discussions with junior and senior staff. The analysis highlighted Oxfam in Algeria’s long‑standing presence, strong credibility, and technical expertise in WASH and food security, while also identifying key challenges such as short‑term and insecure funding, high staff turnover, gaps in innovation, and under‑resourced advocacy and localization efforts.
Building on these findings, IRMA supported Oxfam to define a new vision that centres on empowering Sahrawi communities, especially women, youth, persons with disabilities or reduced mobility, and other marginalised groups, to drive their own development and claim their rights and dignity. The resulting strategy sets five country goals and three strategic orientations that prioritise strengthened advocacy for Sahrawi self‑determination, evidence‑based and localized programming in WASH, food security and livelihoods, and investment in Oxfam in Algeria’s internal capacities, funding base, and knowledge systems.
IRMA’s team for this assignment included Marilise Turnbull, Simon Delorme‑Chalifoux and Leila Bent Mustapha.
