Dadaab

Again, kind of random, but it was an experience that I was interested in.

And through that, I was asked to do some volunteer work and spend some time in the refugee camps in Kenya, in Dadaab.

And it was there where I learned about this concept of hidden hunger.

So at the time, 800 million people were going to bed hungry, but over 3 billion people were going to bed malnourished.

As NPR's Dari Buscheron reports, this could include one of the world's largest refugee camps in northern Kenya.

Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly from Somalia, live in Dadaab, a refugee camp in northern Kenya.

Line Huhn of the Danish Refugee Council says the agency is now preparing evacuation routes and helping farmers build flood-resistant storage for seeds and animal feed.

People have already fled once, mostly from conflict, and a flood is a shock that they simply can't absorb.

Tens of thousands of people in Dadaab were displaced by floods during the last El Niño in twenty twenty-three.

Agencies hope that better preparation this year will save lives.

Dari Buscheron, NPR News.

I, I, I am, uh, I, I, I'm, I'm probably an, uh, outside of, uh, you know, my demographic in terms of being a progressive and the belief in cryptocurrency.

And part of that has to do with the fact that I read a book called The Internet of Money, and, and in a, in a period of time when I was the chairman of the board of the US UN World Food Program, and we were trying to institute, um, micro transaction, the ca- capacity for digital micro transactions among refugees in places like, um, uh, Lebanon, uh, for Syrian refugees and in Dadaab and other places.

Modeled after what was, uh, the, the organic growth of micro transactions that is in a, in the largest, quote-unquote, "slum" in the world in Kibera in, uh, in Kenya, where I spent a, a, a lot of time and, uh, and, uh, and a lot of thought about how to be able to do this.

And so when I say cryptocurrency, what I really mean is the, um, legitimacy and, uh, revolutionary, uh, um, technology that is the blockchain, which will become a fundamental piece of, of, in my estimation, of how, um, we are, um, adopt and are able to interact with AI-

And Uganda was also at war for years.

And over the years, Kenya had a huge influx of refugees, which is why Kenya has some of the largest refugee settlements or camps in the world, whether we are talking about Kakuma, whether we are talking about Dadaab.

and other smaller refugee camps and settlements.

And so a lot of people over the years settled in the country.

And so what we did is we gave them digital wallets, all controlled by the blockchain, all of the, uh, every individual thing, and so that they could go in and we could create refugee camps in which you could enhance the local economy.

And then we spread that out to be able to have subsistence farmers in, um, Sub-Saharan Africa or in the oldest, um, uh, uh, in Dadaab, the, the, the five generations of refugees from, uh, i- in, on the border of g- uh, uh, Kenya and Ethiopia, in which people, all who have phones, all...

Everybody has these phones, would be able to a- transact digitally outside of the banking system.

And so that's what I...

I've been there.

To Dadaab.

Right.

Yeah.