Somalia has leapfrogged to a largely cashless economy: Mobile money is now the dominant form of payment for everyday transactions, despite limited formal banking and ongoing instability.

The Horn of Africa is becoming a laboratory for financial innovation: Ethiopia and Djibouti are also expanding digital payments, showing that necessity can drive rapid adoption of advanced financial technology even in challenging environments.

Innovation does not always follow traditional development paths: The region demonstrates that entrepreneurship and market-driven solutions can flourish without waiting for perfect institutions, challenging conventional development models.

For much of the past four decades, the Horn of Africa States region has been portrayed as a region defined by conflict, drought and famines, political uncertainty and humanitarian crises. But beneath these familiar headlines another story has been unfolding, one that receives far less attention but may prove more consequential. Money, particularly in Somalia, is quietly disappearing.

Not disappearing in the criminal sense, but vanishing from pockets, wallets and tills. Increasingly, it exists as electronic value travelling from one mobile phone to another with remarkable ease. In many Somali towns, buying a cup of tea, paying school fees, settling a taxi fare or purchasing livestock can be completed without a single banknote changing hands. The cashless economy, so often discussed in conferences across Europe and North America, has........

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