Somalia document photos online

For more than three decades, Somalia ran on money that almost nobody officially printed. After the central government collapsed in 1991, the Central Bank stopped issuing notes, yet warlords and businessmen kept ordering shillings from foreign printers anyway. By the mid-2010s an IMF representative estimated that roughly 98 percent of the banknotes in circulation were counterfeit, with only about 2 percent being tattered notes printed in or before 1991. A country effectively had no monetary authority issuing its cash, and people simply refused any denomination newer than the last legitimate ones, a quiet popular consensus that froze the currency in time.

• Counterfeit cash By the mid-2010s an IMF representative estimated about 98 percent of Somali shillings in circulation were counterfeit, with only roughly 2 percent printed legitimately in or before 1991.
• Currency The Central Bank of Somalia issued no new banknotes for over a quarter-century after 1991, leaving the 1,000-shilling note (worth roughly five US cents) as the everyday bill in a market that traded around 26,000 shillings to the dollar by May 2025.
• Digital ID Somalia launched a biometric national ID in September 2023 and made it mandatory for obtaining a passport from 1 September 2025, building a modern identity backbone in a state that had effectively lacked one for decades.
• E-passport The country's new electronic passport is built to International Civil Aviation Organization standards as a fraud-resistant document, a striking pivot for a nation long associated with weak documentation.
• Passport power On the 2025 Henley Passport Index the Somali passport ranked around 100th, granting visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to roughly 33 destinations, one of its strongest positions in over a decade.
• Mobile money More than 70 percent of Somali adults use mobile money, far outpacing formal banking, with Hormuud's EVC Plus dominating payments since its 2011 launch in one of the world's most cash-light economies.
• Diaspora Over 10 percent of Somalis, roughly two million people, live abroad; Kenya hosts the single largest community at nearly half a million, while the UK holds Europe's largest Somali population.
• Camels Somalia is home to the world's largest camel herd, with more than seven million animals, about a third of all camels on Earth.
• Coastline At roughly 3,333 kilometres, Somalia has the longest coastline of any country on mainland Africa.