Building a Financial Platform from Scratch - Learning from Somaliland In a previous post we talked about the opportunity to build a platform, from scratch, based on building cobblestone roads in Ethiopia. There are some similarities to the work we do in terms of building a self- reinforcing system that provides an opportunity for creative problem solving and overall economic expansion. This post builds on this by describing a different example of a platform, but one that becomes necessary as soon as you have roads to travel on—roads that make it possible to move more goods and services around—and that is a platform for money. In our context we call this banking, but what do you do if you don't have banking? I was lucky enough to have a chance to learn about this system and meet with some of the leaders of the service team—this post is about the mobile money platform that brought banking to Somaliland. By way of background, r c: is an area located on the eastern horn of Africa, just north of Ethiopia. It is about the size of Arkansas. Currently, the UN sees it as part of Somalia, though it seeks independence from Somalia and operates essentially as an autonomous region. For those of us that have seen the movie Biackhowk OoLvo or heard about pirates in the Gulf, Somaliland is not where all of that takes place—rather it is about 4 million people living primarily off the land through livestock (a population of over 24 million heads of cattle, cows, goats, and sheep!). The capital city of Hargeisa is accessible over land by crossing the border from Ethiopia (over that unpaved 28km road from the previous post). There is a budding tourism industry and with that a collective desire to maintain a safe environment (we were tourists #20 and #21 for 2011). Sonalilarkl ETHIOPIA • INDIAN OLfAM • 01. • SO Oz. A few statistics on Somaliland: • More than 73% of the population live in poverty • Per-capita GDP is US$226 • Almost 80% of the population