by The Fikiria Desk | Feb 27, 2021 | Consumers
A market can be huge and still be hard to invest in. Somalia’s mobile-money economy has carried a large share of everyday value for years, yet the absence of a formal rulebook kept serious capital at arm’s length. On 27 February 2021, the Central Bank of...
by The Fikiria Desk | Feb 27, 2021 | Money
Capital tends to avoid the very markets where a service is most essential. Somalia’s mobile-money system has moved a large share of the nation’s everyday value for years, yet the absence of a formal supervisory regime kept it hard to finance on...
by The Fikiria Desk | Feb 27, 2021 | Property
A payment system has a physical footprint, even when its product is a message on a phone. Somalia’s mobile-money network runs on agent shopfronts, cash points, telecom masts and the corridors that connect them, and for years that footprint grew without a formal...
by The Fikiria Desk | Feb 27, 2021 | Farming
A farmer can sell a crop and still lose most of its value to the distance between field and payment. Somalia’s rural producers have long moved money by phone, yet the channel that carried their sales sat outside any formal framework, which limited how far it...
by The Fikiria Desk | Feb 27, 2021 | Consumers
Somalis have moved money by phone for years while the channel that carried it sat largely outside formal supervision. That gap narrowed on 27 February 2021, when the Central Bank of Somalia issued the country’s first mobile-money licence, folding an everyday...