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Baxnaano: Somalia's national cash safety net
Baxnaano is Somalia's government-run safety net. Since 2019 it has paid poor families $20 a month by mobile money, rising to $60 in emergencies such as drought or locusts, and the World Bank says it has supported more than four million Somalis. Women receive the regular payments for their households.
What it is
Baxnaano is the name of Somalia's national safety net, run by the federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs with support from the World Bank and the Somalia Multi-Partner Fund (World Bank, December 2025).
It began in 2019 under the Shock Responsive Safety Net for Human Capital Project. It was designed as a state-led safety net system, run by the Somali government (World Bank results brief, October 2022).
How much families get
- Regular support: $20 a month per household, for a three-year cycle, linked to child nutrition (World Bank, 2022).
- Emergency support: up to $60 a month for up to six months during droughts, floods or locust attacks (same source; World Bank, December 2025).
How it is paid
Payments go by mobile money. Women were 100 percent of direct recipients of regular payments and 72 percent of recipients of the locust emergency payments (World Bank, 2022). See Mobile money in Somalia.
How many people it reaches
- In its first two years, about 200,000 households (over 1 million people) received regular payments, in 880 villages across 21 districts. About 100,000 households got emergency payments after the desert locust outbreak (World Bank, 2022).
- By December 2025 the World Bank said Baxnaano had supported more than four million Somalis (World Bank, December 2025).
Who pays for it
Early funding came from World Bank grants: $65 million in 2019, $40 million in 2020 for the locust response, and $185 million more in 2021 (World Bank, 2022).
On 28 October 2025 the World Bank approved BOOST-You, a $112 million project ($100 million from IDA, $10 million from the Somalia Multi-Partner Fund and $2 million from the Global Shield Financing Facility). It will give regular and emergency cash to about 123,000 households (about 738,000 people), add cash linked to health and schooling, and aims to create 28,000 jobs for young people by 2029, 16,800 of them for women (World Bank, 28 October 2025).
One register for all programmes
The government is building a Unified Social Registry with a common registration form, so that one record of each household can be used by every support programme (World Bank, 2022).
Pressures in 2025 and 2026
Federal spending on social benefits fell 88 percent in 2025 as outside funding dropped (Central Bank of Somalia, Annual Report 2025). See Aid to Somalia.
Sources
- World Bank, December 2025 · worldbank.org
- World Bank results brief, October 2022 · worldbank.org
- World Bank, 28 October 2025 · worldbank.org
- Central Bank of Somalia, Annual Report 2025 · centralbank.gov.so
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