According to Oxfam “Every year, members of the Somali diaspora send approximately $1.3 billion to their friends and relatives in Somalia, exceeding all humanitarian and development assistance to the country and comprising between 25 and 40 percent of the country’s economy.”

The question is: Where does this money go? The second question is: Why are the people who are injected with such a massive amount of money are still poor? A third question is: What will happen to the Somali workers in the West if the war in Ukraine affects Europe and America tremendously badly? Let me answer these three questions:

1. This money goes to families, relatives and friends and directly reaches to the recipient, not even a penny of this money goes anywhere else.

2. People are poor because money comes like a charity every month and is used by the family for food, rent, medical expenses transport and buying consumer goods. That family is poor. They have to wait for the next remittance. If the sender adds only one to two hundred dollars to start a family business through KaydYare that family will have an economy of their own in just one year, after which time he or she will not send money to that family.

3. With the slight drop of remittances from Europe and America, many families will perish from the effects of urban famine because they have no economic fallback. Th fragile peace will collapse even if the current Aid level is maintained. The 25-40% gap which was previously filled with remittances will be filled with chaos. If families have had small businesses they would have created some kind of economy to support themselves until such time situation of the Somali Diaspora came back to normal and remittances restarted.