Online connection for remittances

Internet cafés in refugee camps allow refugees to maintain and create networks for overseas remittances. For the many displaced people who rely on receiving money from family members or friends overseas for their daily needs, maintaining these ties is vital. In the Buduburam refugee settlement in Ghana, use of the internet has played an important role in retaining and sometimes even forging transnational connections for financial remittances from Western countries. In the settlement there are a few internet cafés run by Liberian refugee entrepreneurs which enhance refugees’ access to remittances in two ways: firstly, by maintaining the refugees’ existing remittance channels with members of the diaspora community and, secondly, by creating new remittance pipelines by linking refugees with philanthropic individuals in the West.