African Affairs Advance Access originally published online on August 8, 2009
African Affairs 2009 108(433):519-539; doi:10.1093/afraf/adp046
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Between ‘Dirty Money’ and ‘Development Capital’: Somali Money Transfer Infrastructure Under Global Scrutiny
Anna Lindley (al29{at}soas.ac.uk) lectures in Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. The author would like to thank all those who gave their time to help with the research; Kate Meagher, Ismail I. Ahmed, Roger Ballard, David Anderson, and Nicholas van Hear for their feedback; and Ken Menkhaus and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments on an earlier draft.
Money transfer infrastructures have come to play a prominent role in the Somali regions, connecting war-torn cities, refugee camps, and remote rural areas with the rest of the world. Drawing on primary research, this article provides the first detailed history of the development of Somali money transfer infrastructure since the civil war, including its response to international intervention. The account raises issues of wider significance relating to recent debates on migrants’ remittances, informal economies and conflict. In particular, the money transfer story demonstrates how crisis can become an opportunity for adaptive commercial actors using social ties to navigate the dangers of civil war. Meanwhile, the international community's attempts to define Somali money transfers as either dirty money or development capital demonstrate a more general ambivalence towards ‘actually existing developments’ in conflict-affected Africa.