$500 Million: Earmarked by the founder and Chairman of WorldRemit as a munificence to Somaliland

By Abdul Rahman Bangura–

NEW AFRICA DAILY NEWS (NADN) Freetown, Sierra Leone- Dr. Ismail Ahmed for a little over a decade now, fled Nairobi for London to expedite into the world of entrepreneurship. He remembered lost his job at the United Nations (UN) in Nairobi where he served as an Advisor on Remittance programs in East Africa.

He blew up the whistle on corruption on a remittance program in Somalia, a motion that cost him his job, and that later brought him earning income of £200,000 (Sh 29.8 million) for unreasonable treatment by the UN. With this capital, the entrepreneur founded WorldRemit and enabled navigate it to global success over a decade.

In 2020, the organization sent over 50 million customer payments worth roughly $10 billion (Sh 1 trillion) in total. WorldRemit today has an existence in over 150 countries, constituting Kenya, where remittances hit a record Sh341 billion in 2020, according to the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK).

Ahmed’s accomplishments have thrived in duo with WorldRemit, and presently he is bestowing it away through the Sahamiye Foundation, which he previously established in Hargeisa Somaliland. Dr. Ahmed, is initially from Somaliland, having left in 1988 to flee conflict, said he will set aside $500 million(Sh54.2 billion) of his own wealth to the foundation.

Somaliland is a self-declared sovereign state of 4.5 million people located in the Horn of Africa.

“Over the next ten years, my ambition is to be able to commit $500 million of my own wealth and investments to Somaliland-focused development programmes,” he mumbled.

Based in London and Hargeisa, the foundation will originally concentrate on education, healthcare, and infrastructure.

The Sahamiye Foundation strives to make twice as much Somaliland’s literacy rate from 45% to 90% by 2023. It similarly conducts to assist over 100,000 people to improve technical and vocational skills for employment and entrepreneurship; invest in start-up accelerators; and boost levels of health and financial literacy across the
country’s population.

“When we launched WorldRemit in 2010, Somaliland was our first market. Since then, the market has flourished. Interest from international inward investors in Somaliland is increasing and we believe that there is now a real opportunity to help foster the potential for significant economic growth, in a way that benefits communities across the country,” stated Ahmed.

The entrepreneur, who holds a PhD from the University of London and an MBA from London Business School, has also energetically assisted Somaliland’s riposte to the Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

To date, he and the foundation have donated $1 million (Sh107.3 million) worth of PPE and COVID-19 laboratory testing equipment.

For New Africa Daily News Abdul Rahman Bangura Reports,  Africa Correspondent

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