(ERGO) – Abdirisak Malim Ahmed, a shop owner in the central Somali town of Adado, wishes he could draw on his savings of 94 million Somali shillings to support his family through the current times of drought, but nobody wants the paper it is printed on.
He saved the cash over a lengthy period from the proceeds of his store selling food and livestock feed, but it has been useless since confidence was lost in the local currency due to a flood of counterfeit notes.
“We have been keeping this money as it’s our wealth that we have been saving. It is our money although it can’t buy us anything, yet we can’t walk away from it. We have to keep it and hope it will be accepted again, or maybe the government will take it and give us a new currency,” he said.
Businesses and traders in Galmudug embraced the use of mobile money, which is transacted using the American dollar, after counterfeit shillings saturated the market in 2017.
Abdirisak told Radio Ergo that with the harsh drought and rising living costs, bringing the shilling back into circulation would help relieve the suffering of many ordinary people. He finds it hard to pay the bills and support all his dependants on dwindling profits from his business.
“We can’t discard our money – our conscience can’t allow that! We think the government and system will change and salvage the shilling,” he said, “We are planning to hold on to this money.”
“Sometimes we get sad and we bring out the cash and show it to people trying to convince them to use real money and explaining our concern,” he said.
Another small businessman, Idle Yusuf Ahmed, sells clothes in the town of Abudwak in Galgadud. He has also kept his savings of 69 million shillings in cash, believing that the local currency will surely be reinstated.
Several times he has tried to exchange his Somali shillings into dollars. In April, he travelled 880 kilometres to Bosaso where he was told that forex traders would still accept the notes at a rate of 40,000 to the dollar. However, he spent a lot of money on the trip only to be disappointed.
“They told me they would only accept untorn and new notes. Only very few of my notes met those criteria. I told them I wanted to exchange all the money, or I’d take it all back again. I ended up taking it all back after spending $500 on the trip,” he said.
Idle closed his shop in 2017 after Somali shillings started to be rejected in Abudwak. Some relatives helped him reopen his business in 2020, but in the three intervening years he had relied on loans for food and other supplies to feed his family of six. He accrued debts of $1,600 and has been paying back $50 a month, leaving $520 still to settle.
The chairperson of small and medium enterprises association in Galmudug, Maryan Ali Osman, said local many businesspeople have huge savings in shillings. She encouraged them to hold on to their money as she hoped there would be change.
Old people and children, she said, do not understand mobile money transactions and find it difficult to use. Mobile money also disallows small transactions of less than a dollar that are otherwise common. There are also times when the mobile network is down. She said the association has been working on plans to transition through the challenges posed by the rejected cash.
“We are campaigning for a functioning Somali shilling in our country to develop our businesses. I believe the people of Galmudug really need this currency. If the mobile money technology breaks down or develops some technical problem the lives of people come to a standstill,” Maryan said.
