USA, 16 October 2025 — Somalia’s Central Bank Governor, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, has called for urgent reforms and tighter oversight of the financial sector to protect the country’s fragile economy.
Speaking at a high-level IMF panel on “Strengthening Financial System Resilience in Uncertain Times, ” on Tuesday, Abdullahi stressed the importance of building institutional capacity and addressing systemic risks in Somalia’s largely dollarized economy.
“We wouldn’t have been able to rebuild the Central Bank from scratch when the state collapse hit and the bank was non-existent for over a decade and a half,” he said, acknowledging the IMF’s technical support.
Abdullahi explained that conventional monetary policy has a limited impact in Somalia due to the high level of dollarization. “Therefore, we made a strategic decision to strengthen the financial stability framework as the most effective path to achieving sector stability,” he said.
He highlighted findings from an IMF Financial Sector Stability mission to Somalia in August 2024, which identified critical regulatory and supervisory gaps. “The mission provided a sequenced technical assistance roadmap, which is now an integral part of our reform agenda. It showed the value of prioritizing a step-by-step reform path,” Abdullahi said.
The Governor outlined four priority areas: risk-based supervision, systemic risk analysis, financial sector statistics, and mobile money oversight. The Central Bank has since advanced key legislation, including revisions to the Financial Institutions Law, Anti-Money Laundering Law, Insurance Law, and the National Payment Bill.
Mobile money, which dominates Somalia’s payments landscape, remains a top concern. “In our context, I would say strengthen oversight of the under-regulated sectors, specifically the mobile money sector. It has systemic importance — last year alone, it handled over 12 billion U.S. dollars,” he said.
Abdullahi said reforms will be implemented over the next four years, combining legal revisions, regulatory technology adoption, and targeted capacity-building programs to ensure transparency and stability in Somalia’s financial system.
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