Martin Mohamed walks in and out of several stores at Karmel mall, an eight year old mall in South Minneapolis that hosts about 300 Somali stores.

Mohamed is the chairman of the African Chamber of Commerce (ACC). He knows most of the shop owners and calls everyone he meets by name. A quick tour around the mall shows the growing number of small-businesses. He senses the financial struggles some of them are going through.

“There is a need for the African businesses to grow,” Mohamed says. “One is to do business with each other, enter the main stream American business, and to become a certified minority business provider.”

Shock waves of the economic downturn have a global impact, with few countries escaping the effects on their formal economies. But in the developing world, the informal economy continues to chug along as a significant motor for producing wealth for people beyond the reach of traditional financial institutions and government regulation.

Semenyo Ahli gathers stray carts in the Wal-Mart parking lot on University Avenue in St. Paul. He came to the United States four years ago for economic opportunity and to attend college to become a registered nurse. Despite being qualified to work as a nursing assistant, Ahli has been unsuccessful in finding a second job in addition to Wal-Mart. However, no matter how tight the money gets, Ahli still sends money back home to Togo every month. “I have brothers and sister back home,” he said. “And my dad is not working, so they use the money for food.”

Minnesota is home to the largest settlement of Somalis in the United States. And young Somalis here are beginning to find their voices in their new home. They will speak and act against youth violence among their own. They will fight media and mainstream perceptions of their culture. And they will build a new Somalia. 

Semenyo Ahli gathers stray carts in the Wal-Mart parking lot on University Avenue in St. Paul. He came to the United States four years ago for economic opportunity and to attend college to become a registered nurse. Despite being qualified to work as a nursing assistant, Ahli has been unsuccessful in finding a second job in addition to Wal-Mart. However, no matter how tight the money gets, Ahli still sends money back home to Togo every month. “I have brothers and sister back home,” he said. “And my dad is not working, so they use the money for food.”

Minnesota is home to the largest settlement of Somalis in the United States. And young Somalis here are beginning to find their voices in their new home. They will speak and act against youth violence among their own. They will fight media and mainstream perceptions of their culture. And they will build a new Somalia. 

Despite fears of distractions from  the missing Somali youth saga that has engulfed the Somali community in Minnesota, the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center held its 9th Annual Convention at the Minneapolis Convention Center over the  weekend where thirty speakers addressed 10,000 people over three days. Participants said it was encouraging to see the number of attendees, the breadth of topics, and the scope of talent.

CLARKSON, GA. -– In this small town on the edge of Atlanta, the FBI and local law enforcement are looking out for an alarming kind of crime: radical Islamist terrorists potentially trying to recruit the town's young Somali-Americans to fight a war in Africa.

There is terrorist recruitment taking place already in Minnesota, said Clarkston police chief Tony J. Scipio. That's why his department and the FBI are looking for anything similar in the Somali-American community here in Clarkston.