GLOBAL NEWS

Hawala clo­sure bites So­mali busi­nesses in Kenya


The Kenyan gov­ern­men­t’s re­cent de­ci­sion to sus­pend the Hawala in­for­mal cash trans­fer sys­tem, which is used mainly by the So­mali ex­pa­tri­ate com­mu­nity, is al­ready tak­ing a bite out of busi­ness in Nairo­bi’s East­leigh dis­trict.
“The clo­sure has been hugely felt,” Ahmed Mo­hamed, sec­re­tary-gen­eral of the East­leigh Busi­ness Com­mu­nity, told The Anadolu Agency.

In the Eastleigh district, commonly known as “little Mogadishu” due to its large Somali population, the impact of the move was felt immediately. At the entrance of all Somali-owned money transfer companies, notes could be seen informing customers of the indefinite closure. “We have inconvenienced many customers,” Rashka Dugal, who works at a local hawala, told AA. “The government should have done more investigations [before taking the decision]. This is a blanket punishment for all Somalis,” he insisted.

“We are los­ing out on busi­ness. I be­lieve my com­pany is in­no­cent,” said Du­gal. East­leigh’s his­tory dates back to Kenya’s colo­nial era, when the dis­trict was built specif­i­cally to ac­com­mo­date Kenyans of South Asian de­scent. Later, Kenyan So­ma­lis be­gan set­tling in the area, fol­lowed by So­mali refugees flee­ing the civil war that broke out in their coun­try in 1990. Many en­ter­pris­ing So­mali refugees set up shop in the dis­trict, sell­ing every­thing from food and cloth­ing to elec­tron­ics and jew­elry.


The good prices at­tract many cus­tomers to the area, es­pe­cially new­ly­weds, while traders come from as far afield as South Su­dan, Uganda, Tan­za­nia and Ethiopia to do busi­ness. The thriv­ing com­mer­cial dis­trict is es­ti­mated to do up to $100 mil­lion in busi­ness each month.

Much of the busi­ness is started with money re­ceived from the So­mali di­as­pora and busi­nesses run by So­mali na­tion­als. “We sur­vive on the money sent to us through Hawalas,” Ab­d­i­fa­tah Os­man, a So­mali na­tional liv­ing in East­leigh, told AA. He had been ex­pect­ing $1,800 to be sent through a funds trans­fer com­pany one day be­fore the clo­sure. “The money – from my brother in Toronto – was to meant to pay the rent, meet the fee bal­ance and buy food,” fumed Os­man. “Now we’re stuck.” Ac­cord­ing to the UN’s High Com­mis­sioner for Refugees (UN­HCR), there are cur­rently 423,153 reg­is­tered So­mali refugees in Kenya. All busi­nesses – from de­signer cloth­ing sales to Khat, a lo­cal nar­cotic – have been af­fected by the move, ac­cord­ing to lo­cals. All buses ply­ing routes in the north­east­ern part of the coun­try, mean­while, have been grounded by the gov­ern­ment. “Buses to Garissa are not op­er­at­ing now,” said Mo­hamed of the East­leigh Busi­ness Com­mu­nity.

“This means hun­dreds of dri­vers, con­duc­tors and clean­ers are now job­less,” he lamented. Mo­hamed, on be­half of other Kenyan So­ma­lis and So­mali busi­ness­men, urged the gov­ern­ment to re­con­sider the de­ci­sion. “We de­mand that the hawalas be per­mit­ted to op­er­ate im­me­di­ately,” he told AA. Kenyan Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary for De­fense Rachael Omamo, for her part, de­fended the mea­sure. “Ac­tions taken yes­ter­day are fully con­sis­tent with in­ter­na­tional law and do­mes­tic law, es­pe­cially with the UN Se­cu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion on the fi­nanc­ing of ter­ror­ism,” she said.