Mobile money and Somali social networks: Cultivating monetary alternatives in a volatile world.
Gianluca Iazzolino · 2013
In recent years, a discussion on how to harness information and communication technologies (ICTs) for ?banking the unbanked? has emerged within the broader field of study and practice on the ICT for development (ICT4D). Framed as a critical technology to ?financially include the poor?, mobile telephony is increasingly used to deliver financial services through mobile money platforms, such as Kenya?s M-Pesa, the most successful experience to date. The purpose of this paper is to examine the usage of M-Pesa among urban Somali refugees in Nairobi, Kenya. In particular, it endeavours to understand how this innovation is integrated within the Somali repertoire of financial institutions, engaging with the way actors navigate across different monetary circuits. Based on an ethnography conducted in the mostly Somali inhabited estate of Eastleigh, Nairobi, it argues that the interplay of M-Pesa and Somali financial arrangements occurs in accordance with culturally oriented ideas of finance and money and problematizes the assumptions behind the design and the implementation of services, borne out of partnerships between the humanitarian and the business sector, to financially include the poor. Illustrating the strategies deployed by the actors to cultivate multiplicity and preserve financial alternatives in a volatile environment, it aims to contribute to the reflection on the mutual shaping of ICT4D and pre-existing institutions.