Displacement stigma, insecurity and inequality in urban Somalia: the limits of digital financial empowerment

Growing Somali cities are shaped by the settlement of people displaced from rural areas by conflict and ecological shocks. This article examines the stigma and insecurities associated with displacement alongside narratives of (post)conflict development and digital economic transformations. Local innovations like ‘mobile money’ are often seen to improve access to aid and finance for marginalised populations. Drawing from interviews with displacement-affected communities and analysis the telecommunications sector, the article argues that digital finance can reinforce the subordinate position of poor, displaced populations in precarious wage labour at city margins, while digital (il)literacy and the absence of physical cash disadvantage the most vulnerable subgroups. Telecom companies exert significant influence across the economy through digital money systems and their entanglement with international humanitarian actors. Narratives of technologically-driven ‘development’ overshadow wider debate about inequality in a context characterised by weak state institutions with little appetite or capacity for redistributive policies.