{"id":63070,"date":"2021-04-07T17:15:55","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T17:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/?p=63070"},"modified":"2021-04-07T17:15:55","modified_gmt":"2021-04-07T17:15:55","slug":"somaliland-worldremit-founder-launches-sahamiye-foundation-to-tackle-the-countrys-development-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/2021\/04\/07\/somaliland-worldremit-founder-launches-sahamiye-foundation-to-tackle-the-countrys-development-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"Somaliland: WorldRemit founder launches Sahamiye Foundation to tackle the Country\u2019s development challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hargeisa (Arabsiyonews)- A team led by WorldRemit founder Ismail Ahmed has today launched Sahamiye Foundation, a philanthropic organisation focused on using technology and innovation to tackle Somaliland\u2019s most pressing development challenges.<\/p>\n

The vice president of Somaliland, Abidrahman Saylici attended the launching ceremony of the Foundation<\/p>\n

Over the next 10 years, Ismail Ahmed\u2019s ambition is to be able to commit $500 million of his own wealth and investments to Somaliland-focused development programmes.<\/p>\n

The Foundation, based in London and Hargeisa, Somaliland\u2019s capital, will initially focus on education, healthcare and infrastructure projects across Somaliland. The Foundation seeks to help over 1 million adults and young people acquire literacy skills in the Somali language and double Somaliland\u2019s literacy rate from 45% to 90% by 2023. The Foundation will support over 100,000 people to develop technical and vocational skills for employment and entrepreneurship; invest in start-up accelerators; and increase levels of health and financial literacy across the country\u2019s population<\/p>\n

The Foundation has already unveiled a series of major education programmes: Daariz, a free, fun and easy-to-use app that helps people with low literacy skills to learn the Somali language; Books for Change, which provides one million low-priced books every year; and Resources for Schools, a suite of digital and print educational resources designed for schools and colleges. To support Somaliland\u2019s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to date, Ismail Ahmed has donated $1 million worth of PPE and COVID-19 laboratory testing equipment and kit to strengthen the country\u2019s capacity and support healthcare workers across the country.<\/p>\n

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Somaliland Map<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Situated on the Horn of Africa, Somaliland is home to around 4.5 million people. In the absence of formal recognition, Somaliland has adopted an innovative approach to building its own institutions that are optimised for the specific challenges that the country faces. However, in choosing to move away from traditional solutions offered by the aid sector, Somaliland has received very little development assistance. Innovative development finance solutions are required to overcome the barriers that Somaliland faces, going beyond the traditional models of donor funding and towards a more entrepreneurial, scale-up approach that focuses on building capacity, capabilities and skills that will generate solutions to the country\u2019s challenges from within.<\/p>\n

Drawing on Ismail Ahmed\u2019s experience and background in building and scaling a globally successful technology company, Sahamiye Foundation will adopt a start-up philosophy and mindset to invest in programmes that will help to overcome barriers to Somaliland\u2019s growth and development, and to build \u2018homegrown\u2019 products and platforms.<\/p>\n

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vice president Saylici speaking at the launching ceremony of the foundation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSomaliland is a nation that has built itself from the ground up, embracing technology and entrepreneurship to make progress that was never thought possible. However, Somaliland still faces development challenges that require significant investment to lay the foundations for economic growth, good health and prosperity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe there are clear opportunities to make a significant and meaningful impact on the lives of Somaliland\u2019s hopeful, ambitious and entrepreneurial people \u2013 with broader, positive impact for the country\u2019s future and that of the wider region,\u201d says Ismail Ahmed, founder of Sahamiye Foundation<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ismail added, \u201cSomaliland\u2019s mobile technology infrastructure is considered as one of the best in Africa, making Somaliland closer to a cashless economy than anywhere else in the world. The phenomenal success of mobile money helped accelerate the growth of international remittances which increased 15% in 2020 to $1.3 billion, according to the central bank of Somaliland.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen 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,\u201d Said Ismail Ahmed Speaking at the launching ceremony of Sahamiye, which is the largest charity foundation in Somaliland, which he earmarked to spend $500 million of his own fortune on the development of education and health programmes in Somaliland.<\/p>\n

Arabsiyonews.com<\/p>\n

Hargeysa Office<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hargeisa (Arabsiyonews)- A team led by WorldRemit founder Ismail Ahmed has today launched Sahamiye Foundation, a philanthropic organisation focused on using technology and innovation to tackle Somaliland\u2019s most pressing development challenges. The vice president of Somaliland, Abidrahman Saylici attended the launching ceremony of the Foundation Over the next 10 years, Ismail Ahmed\u2019s ambition is to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-english-news","category-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arabsiyonews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/sahamiye-foundation.jpg?fit=696%2C464&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5kp1p-gpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63070"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63072,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63070\/revisions\/63072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}