Vang: Somali women entrepreneurs are revving up Minnesota’s economy

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of material from eight contributing columnists, along with other commentary online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

Political rhetoric has a way of flattening people. In Minnesota, Somali women are too often framed through tired and false lenses: need, obedience, difference.

In the current climate of heightened ICE activity marked by fear, racial profiling and community withdrawal, that flattening has consequences. It obscures the real story hiding in plain sight. Somali women are not an economic “concern.” They are an economic engine for Minnesota’s economy.

This is not a feel-good immigrant story. It’s a market story. A workforce story. A true story.

Spend time in Somali commercial corridors — from Karmel Mall in Minneapolis to neighborhood storefronts in St. Cloud — and you will see it. Somali women are starting, owning and operating businesses that quietly stabilize neighborhoods, create jobs and circulate dollars locally.

They run child care centers, health care agencies, salons, restaurants, consulting firms and retail shops. Many work two jobs while also managing households. Even those assumed to be “at home” are often running side hustles — henna, hair, catering, online sales — feeding Minnesota’s informal and formal economies alike.

Yet fear is now interrupting this engine.

Abdikadir Bashir, executive director of the Center for African Immigrants and Refugees Organization (CAIRO), based in St. Cloud, says ICE activity has visibly changed behavior. Community members are withdrawing from public spaces. Businesses see less foot traffic. Most of them are citizens, he noted, but are still being targeted and scapegoated. One of CAIRO’s female staff members was recently stopped by ICE and was shaken up for hours afterward, he said.

Most of CAIRO’s programs are led by women, serving communities far beyond Somali Minnesotans. “Go to commercial spaces — it’s women making it happen,” he said. “Go to schools, playgrounds, hospitals. Women are holding us together.”

Yusra Mohamud is the founder and CEO of Twin Cities-based Yuspire, a strategy consulting firm supporting businesses past the startup phase. Her clients often seek her out precisely because she understands their lived experience. “Finding consultants is easy,” she told me. “Finding a Black, Somali, East African woman who understands your reality — that’s hard.” Her strength, she says, comes from a tradition where Muslim women manage finances and make decisions about children’s education.

At Karmel Mall, Somali women entrepreneurs are usually quite visible. When I visited last week with my husband and children, many of the shops were closed. Missing were the aromas of rich spices, soft Somali music floating through the corridors and hum of conversation in Somali spoken by shoppers and vendors.

Here’s the truth Minnesotans need to grapple with: Somali women are not peripheral to our economy. They reinvest locally. They hire locally. They build businesses where traditional investment has long looked away.

If policymakers, funders and community members genuinely care about economic development, workforce growth and neighborhood stability, they must move beyond rhetoric and into action. Stop debating Somali women’s value to Minnesota and start investing in their success.