Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta said the government  was planning to reopen the 13 Somali-linked money transfer firms that were shut down after a deadly terror attack on a local university in April that left 148 people dead and hundreds others injured.

The Somalia-linked money transfer firms were shut down on suspicion of helping finance Al-Qaida-linked Al Shabab militants, who staged an attack on a university in Garissa, a town north east of the capital Nairobi.

The militants have made several other attacks in Kenya, including the Westgate mall attack in September 2013 that shocked the world.

Most of the banking in the war-torn horn of Africa nation, which has only six licensed commercial banks, is done through informal money transfer firms, known as Hawalas.

The hawala system is the only means of transferring money back home by many Somalis living outside the nation. Its estimated that there are roughly a million Somali nationals living in Kenya as refugees after their country was devastated by a more than two-decade civil war.

It is estimated that an astonishing $1.3bn (£840m) is sent to families in Somalia every year by relatives who fled the country during two decades of conflict, to join the Diaspora.

That is roughly half of Somalia’s gross national income – and 80 percent of total investment – easily eclipsing all international aid to the country. The World Bank estimates that 40 percent of all Somalis depend on remittances for their basic needs.

The Somalia’s informal money transfer systems came under pressure in February after American and British banks stopped operating in the country due to strict regulations set by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency over concerns of money laundering and funding for terrorist organizations.