Kenya as a country could lose billions in the annual inflows of foreign currency if the Dadaab Refugee Camp is shut down.
Dadaab, which hosts nearly half a million foreigners, has over the last 20 years of its existence matured into a well-oiled trading hub that amasses in large sums of foreign and donor aid from over 30 agencies and governments including the United States, Germany, UK and the United Nations.
According to submissions from the Department of Refugee Affairs (DAF), Dadaab is not an ordinary refugee camp but a big trading and business centre that avails varied needs to the hundreds of thousands of people living there as refugees, natives or even as workers.
The giant numbers of refugees living in the five isolated camps that make Dadaab has evidently created a very dynamic financial hub with billions of money worth of transport, security, retail and education services.
Kenya reckons that the over 20-year old camp has become a host place for the Somalia-based terrorist group.