By Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim Nor, PhD
Somalia is quietly experiencing a financial shift that is changing how humanitarian aid is funded and distributed. In a country where formal banking systems have collapsed and over 70 percent of the population relies on aid to survive, Hormuud’s EVC-Plus mobile money platform has become the main support for humanitarian finance. Launched in 2011, EVC-Plus now handles more than $2.7 billion in monthly transactions, reaching even the most remote and conflict-affected areas.
Our recent study shows the strongest evidence yet that digital cash transfers through EVC-Plus are transforming humanitarian aid. By skipping physical supply chains and reducing administrative steps, mobile money has enhanced the speed, security, and efficiency of aid delivery across Somalia. Among all factors examined, financial integration—seamlessly connecting mobile money with everyday financial activities—was identified as the most influential factor in successful aid delivery. This column examines how Somalia’s experience is reshaping humanitarian finance and what it indicates about the future of aid delivery in fragile states globally.
Somalia’s Digital Lifeline
Somalia is a country where fragility is the norm rather than the exception. Decades of conflict, recurring droughts, and the collapse of institutions have severely weakened public services and left formal banking almost nonexistent. In this environment, the delivery of humanitarian aid has historically been fraught with inefficiency, risk, and loss. Trucks carrying grain navigate unsafe roads, convoys often face threats of diversion, and bureaucratic red tape delays life-saving support. However, in the past decade, a quiet revolution has occurred—humanitarian finance has gone digital..
At the heart of this transformation is Hormuud’s EVC-Plus, a mobile money platform that has redefined the way aid is financed and delivered in one of the world’s most fragile states. Launched in 2011 as a simple peer-to-peer service, EVC-Plus has become Somalia’s unofficial financial backbone. Today, the platform processes over $2.7 billion in monthly transactions, reaching deeply into drought-stricken villages, displacement camps, and regions that have long been cut off from traditional financial networks.
For humanitarian agencies, this shift is monumental. EVC-Plus bypasses broken banks, collapsed institutions, and physical barriers, delivering life-saving resources directly to those in need. As an officer from the World Food Programme puts it, “Digital platforms like EVC-Plus allow us to move money, not sacks of grain. In conflict zones, speed saves lives.”
Digital Finance as Humanitarian Infrastructure
Somalia’s humanitarian response is experiencing a major change: shifting from physical sacks of grain to digital cash transfers. Where once convoys of rice, oil, and relief supplies moved along unsafe roads, platforms like Hormuud’s EVC-Plus now provide aid through a single mobile transaction. In vulnerable areas where speed and security can mean the difference between life and death, digital finance has become the foundation of humanitarian efforts.
EVC-Plus addresses three longstanding challenges in the sector. First, it eliminates logistical bottlenecks; when conflicts or floods block roads, mobile payments can bypass physical barriers entirely, reaching recipients wherever there is signal coverage. Second, it helps combat fraud and diversion, as each transfer creates a verifiable digital trail, thereby enhancing donor confidence and improving accountability. Third, it restores dignity to beneficiaries by allowing families to choose how to spend their aid—whether on food, medicine, school fees, or shelter—rather than receiving preselected rations.
Although there have been significant advancements, these gains are not guaranteed. Digital literacy gaps continue to be a challenge, particularly among older populations, rural women, and displaced communities. While Somalia has extensive mobile coverage, there are still connectivity blackspots. This situation compels humanitarian agencies to adopt blended delivery models that combine mobile transfers with limited in-kind assistance. The potential of digital finance is immense, but realizing it requires investment in accessibility, literacy, and inclusion to ensure that no one is left behind.
The Global Lesson
Somalia’s EVC-Plus revolution offers valuable lessons that extend well beyond the Horn of Africa. Throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, mobile money is transforming the landscape of humanitarian and development finance. In countries like Niger, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, similar digital ecosystems have enabled aid agencies to deliver cash directly to households during crises. This approach allows them to bypass ineffective banking systems and unreliable supply chains. The evidence is compelling: when state infrastructure fails, digital platforms can serve as the framework that supports entire economies and sustains lives.
Somalia highlights an important warning: reliance on digital systems has its own vulnerabilities. What occurs when a platform experiences a major outage, suffers a cyberattack, or becomes embroiled in political interference? In fragile states, where trust in institutions is already low, concentrating financial transactions on a few private platforms can lead to new risks of exclusion and instability. While mobile money can be empowering, it can also be unsettling; it transforms humanitarian aid but simultaneously exacerbates digital inequalities and heightens governance tensions. Somalia’s success with EVC-Plus demonstrates what is achievable, but it also raises urgent questions about resilience, regulation, and equity in the global shift toward digital humanitarian finance.
Shaping the Future of Humanitarian Finance
If EVC-Plus has become the backbone of humanitarian efforts in Somalia, the stakes for policymakers, telecom companies, and aid organizations are exceptionally high. Digital humanitarian finance is no longer an experiment; it has become essential infrastructure. To ensure its sustainability, the Government of Somalia must formally recognize mobile money as critical national infrastructure and incorporate it into social protection and emergency response systems.
Telecom providers like Hormuud must make significant investments in offline capabilities, network resilience, and data security to protect against outages and cyber threats that could disrupt aid delivery. Additionally, humanitarian agencies must find a balance between innovation and inclusivity, ensuring that rural populations, women, and low-literacy communities are not excluded from accessing vital financial assistance. Without intentional safeguards, the very tools meant to address inequalities could inadvertently exacerbate them, transforming Somalia’s digital advances into another source of humanitarian vulnerability.
From Somalia to the World: A Financial Revolution
The rise of EVC-Plus marks a significant shift in humanitarian finance and logistics, blurring the lines between banking and aid, private innovation and public goods, and short-term relief and long-term resilience. In Somalia, mobile money has evolved into a crucial survival strategy in a vulnerable state, and as global crises intensify, other fragile nations may follow suit.
The focus has shifted from whether mobile money should be included in humanitarian efforts to creating secure, inclusive, and resilient systems for future emergencies. In Baidoa, Fartun uses her $60 transfer to buy fresh water from a neighbor. This seemingly small act, when multiplied across communities, is quietly reshaping humanitarian finance, shifting power from institutions to individuals and transforming how aid is delivered.
Concluding Remarks
Somalia’s experience with Hormuud’s EVC-Plus illustrates that digital finance is no longer just a convenience; it is becoming the backbone of humanitarian aid. In a country where banks have collapsed, roads are unsafe, and public systems barely function, mobile money has transformed how relief is financed and delivered, providing speed, transparency, and dignity at scale. However, this revolution also reveals new vulnerabilities: dependence on private platforms, the risk of exclusion for marginalized groups, and the necessity for stronger safeguards against service outages, cyber threats, and political interference. As climate disasters, conflicts, and displacement crises escalate worldwide, Somalia’s story offers valuable lessons for fragile states everywhere.
The future of humanitarian aid will be digital, decentralized, and data-driven. However, whether it is also inclusive, secure, and resilient will depend on the choices that policymakers, telecom companies, and aid agencies make today. What is quietly unfolding in Baidoa and Mogadishu is not merely a Somali experiment; it represents the frontline of a global shift in humanitarian finance, which will determine who receives assistance, how quickly, and under what conditions.
Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim Nor is the Minister of Rural Development and Resilience in SouthWest Somalia and Former Permanent Secretary of Office of the Prime Minister.