HARGEISA, Somaliland — Recurring drought and ongoing insecurity have left large swaths of the Somali population in consistent need of humanitarian assistance. Increasingly, that assistance has been in the form of cash transfers.
Somalia has one of the most active mobile money markets in the world, which has facilitated the expansion of mobile money cash transfers as a practical and efficient tool for the humanitarian sector in recent years, alongside other cash programs, such as vouchers.
While the programs have been used in Somalia since 2003, it wasn’t until famine warnings in 2017 that the humanitarian sector massively scaled up this type of aid. Within four months of the alert being issued, more than 3 million people were reached with cash transfers each month.