Financial Innovation and Resource Mobilization
in Somalia
Title: Innovation for Financial Resource Mobilization in Somalia
Dates: January 2024 to March 2026
Partners: ADRA Norway, ADRA Somalia, and the Somali Response Innovation Lab (SomRIL)
Context: Somalia faces significant gaps in financial access for at-risk communities. This project aims to bridge those gaps by co-creating and scaling alternative financing solutions that are culturally relevant and technologically modern.
Primary Goal: To derive community-led, innovative, and co-created alternative financing products that can be scaled across Somalia and the broader East African region.
Project Objectives
The project was built on three core outcomes designed to move from research to implementation:
Outcome 1: Indigenous Knowledge Integration – Using local insights to understand existing and prospective financial instruments within Somali communities.
Outcome 2: Multi-Stakeholder Consensus – Building a unified vision between government, policy leaders, the private sector, andinnovators regarding the requirements for new financial mechanisms.
Outcome 3: Scaling Solutions – Identifying and financing at least three potential solutions anchored in Human-Centered Design (HCD)to be tested and scaled.
About FIRM
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The Problem We Were Solving
The project aims to reduce aid dependency by addressing the lack of suitable, inclusive, and innovative financial products for vulnerable Somali communities—particularly women and small entrepreneurs—by leveraging diaspora resources, strengthening local financial ecosystems, and co‑creating solutions through a community‑driven innovation process.
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Why It Matters and Who It Affects
Somalia’s extreme fragility has made it one of the world’s hardest places to attract private investment, and at the same time the global aid landscape is shifting with declining humanitarian funds, leaving vulnerable communities—especially women and youth without the financial tools they need to survive and grow.
To break this cycle, the project aims to build new, community‑driven routes for capital by leveraging diaspora resources, local innovators, and alternative financing models that can reduce aid dependency and strengthen Somalia’s long‑term economic resilience.
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What Makes Our Approach Different
Our approach uses a community-led, ecosystem-driven design process that brings together affected communities, startups, financial institutions, and government to co‑define problems and co‑create de‑risked, culturally appropriate financial solutions.
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The Winning Innovations
Bilow Capital is creating a diaspora investment platform and venture lab that connects Somali startups—especially women‑led enterprises—to diaspora investors through a curated, virtual, and de‑risked investment pipeline. It is combined with accelerator programming and large‑scale due diligence to lower investment risk and unlock new capital flows into fragile markets like Somalia.
Wadaag Microfinance is piloting a Sharia‑compliant model that combines collateral‑free credit with subsidized share ownership, enabling grassroots women to use shares to access credit and become co‑owners of a financial institution. It innovates by pairing financial literacy, investor‑protection mechanisms, and structured share onboarding to build long‑term financial inclusion and women’s economic agency in underserved communities.
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Project Reach & Impact
The project serves vulnerable Somali communities — including female-headed households, women and youth entrepreneurs, small business owners, agro-pastoralists, and traditional farmers — who lack access to appropriate financial services and are acutely affected by drought, conflict, and food insecurity.
Women and youth micro-entrepreneurs (typically aged 27–35) running small enterprises such as eateries, kiosks, beauty shops, and grocery stalls, who struggle with limited access to credit, IDs, and financial education. Diaspora investors, who represent a major source of capital (USD 2B+ annually) but lack structured, trusted financial instruments to invest in Somali businesses
15+ SMEs and startups have completed the Bilow Venture Lab due diligence and accelerator programme, each with a customised, sharia-compliant investment plan. Besides, 200+ women in Baidoa have purchased shares, completed financial literacy training, and gained access to credit through Wadaag Microfinance.
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Results, Traction, or Early Evidence
WADAAG is scaling their approach to new markets across Somaliland with this project but leveraging the sale of shares with other partnerships in places like Mogadishu, Puntland, & Somaliland.
Since the launch of the RISE Platform, Bilow has met with over 15+ diaspora to help facilitate investments.
Innovations Supported by FIRM
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Bilow Capital
Founded by Hana Kaise and Ahmed Ali, Bilow Capital emerged from a shared commitment to reimagining how businesses grow and scale across the region. With Hana's background in impact investing and Ahmed's entrepreneurial experience, the two co-founders launched Bilow Capital in late 2022 to support bold ideas that solve real challenges and drive inclusive economic growth. Bilow Capital’s mission is to diversify investment through dynamic fund management and strategic partnerships, building a community of impactful investors that fuel lasting business growth.
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Wadaag Microfinance
Wadaag Microfinance (Wadaag MFI) is a subsidiary company of Wadaag Group Licenced by the Central Bank of Somaliland. Wadaag micro finance service is of international standard level and is government accredited microfinance company in horn of africa. One of Wadaag MFI’s most important goals is to provide financial services that meet the needs of clients with limited income.
Recap on the Challenge Call
Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) Norway and Somalia Response Innovation Lab (SomRIL) with the support of Innovation Norway, are looking for solutions in Somalia to address the financial challenges confronting the impoverished Somali communities by seeking innovative financial solutions from the local ecosystem to bolster the local capacity and stimulate innovative financial Solutions.
The financial challenges faced by the vulnerable communities in Somalia are deeply rooted in the long-standing and intricate Somalia humanitarian crisis. This crisis stands as one of the world's most challenging and protracted emergencies. Factors underpinning the crisis have collectively wrought havoc on the livelihoods of the Somali people and exacerbated the detrimental impacts of recurring natural disasters, such as droughts and floods.
Through the utilization of a community-led and ecosystem-driven design thinking and doing the process of Response Innovation Lab (RIL), with funding support from Innovation Norway, FIRM will map the depth and breadth of problems and derive innovative solutions from the broader ecosystem. Within this framework, the project will draw upon SomRIL's approach to humanitarian innovation, characterized by its pillars of innovation, namely: convening, matchmaking, co-creation, and the generation of evidence from the pilots.
The challenge was conceptualized through a co-creation workshop in March 2024 bringing together both the traditional and non- traditional actors (start-ups, private sectors, academia) to unpack the key challenges in the space of innovative financing and define the challenge statements for the solution scouting process.
What the Program Offers
Application pitch preparation: 1 day pitching bootcamp to prepare shortlisted applicants for final pitching.
Fund: Selection of high potential innovators who receive grants of up to $50,000 each to test their innovation in the field.
Accelerate: 6 month acceleration program supporting funded innovators to grow their solution by connecting them with potential funders, partners and Country Offices who can support implementation. Working with innovators to capture learnings and impact and sharing knowledge. Building and nurturing a community of innovators, alumni and support networks.
