By Sarah McGregor  Jan 29, 2014

Somaliland, a breakaway territory in northern Somalia, has a gross domestic product of $1.4 billion with a “high” income gap between rich and poor, according to the World Bank’s first economic output estimate.

Somaliland’s GDP per capita of $348 in 2012 ranked as the world’s fourth-lowest after Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi, the Washington-based lender said in an e-mailed presentation released today in the capital, Hargeisa.

“A focus on how to address inequality in Somaliland and ensure access to services for all, will be important to secure progress for all,” the bank said, according to the statement.

Somaliland, which has a population of 3.5 million, declared independence from Somalia after the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. No sovereign state has recognized the region as an independent nation. Companies including London-based Genel Energy Plc (GENL) and RAK Gas LLC of the United Arab Emirates are exploring for oil and gas in the region.

Somaliland’s Gini coefficient, a measure of the income gap, is 45.7 in rural areas compared to 27 in Ethiopia and 42.6 in urban centers against 37 in the neighboring country. The index ranges from 0, which represents perfect equality, to 100, which implies complete inequality, according to the bank.

The uneven distribution of wealth is a “major challenge,” with 29 percent of households in urban areas and 38 percent in rural Somaliland living in poverty, according to a 2013 household and enterprise survey carried out by the World Bank from January to March.

Livestock Contribution

The livestock industry accounts for 30 percent of the economy, followed by trade at 20 percent, crop production at 8 percent and real estate at 6 percent, the bank said.

The accuracy of the estimates is hindered by a lack of data and difficulty in measuring output by nomadic populations, and remittance and foreign aid flows are not captured, the bank said. While there are no isolated figures for Somaliland, overseas workers send home $1.2 billion to Somalia every year, while official development aid totaled $150 million for Somaliland in 2012.

The country’s “low” level of domestic revenue, which at 8.5 percent of GDP is about half of the sub-Saharan African average, consists largely of trade levies, while the country’s few “large businesses” pay insufficient taxes, the bank said.

The region should review its tax regime, which charges companies 10 percent of their profit, compared with 26 percent in Ethiopia and 28 percent in Kenya, according to the bank.

Half of government spending in the decade through 2012 has been spent on security, while health care and education expenditure has been kept low, it said. The al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militant group al-Shabaab has waged an insurgency against the Western-back government in Somalia since 2007 in a bid to impose Shariah law.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah McGregor in Nairobi atsmcgregor5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net

by Nouri Omer Abdillahi

My last trip to Addis was a very pleasant one. I was there to pick up my daughter Layla who was arriving from New Orleans as an unaccompanied minor; therefor it was nice for me to meet her at the Airport. When she got there we got to hangout, and ate some good Ethiopian food

Aside from the little irritations caused by the local service workers such as taxi drivers, and restaurant waiters who greatly abuse the word “Ishi” which apparently means OK in their language, everything else was enjoyable. Although a very pleasant nation of people they have a habit of acting like they understand you by saying “Ishi” when they clearly didn’t. I know this because many times my taxi driver and I were lost in the city even though he said he knew where he was going. Also a lot more times then I would like to remember I was served the wrong food, or drink at a restaurant because of this particular word.

Arriving at Hargiesa airport after a ride on a very small eighteen setter plain, Layla and I were very happy to be on the ground. The ride was a very short one, an hour and twenty minutes, but I can’t say it was uneventful. While flying above Hargiesa we encountered some heavy air bumps, that sent the little plane dipping from side to side, which got the passengers to let out a couple of screams.

Things were going smoothly after that till I found out that my Mother took off that morning to her house in the country with our car with out any explanation. At the airport we were luckily met by NihNih, my sister Shukri’s driver at work, who saved us fro walking home dragging our bags behind us. Although it may seem to you that this story is about our trip, I’m sorry to disappoint you, because this is a story about some goats, so let me get on wit it.

When my mother came back from her sudden getaway to the country, along with her arrived a mother goat and her new baby goat, also with them was my aunt Khdan and her two young grand children, and what looked like their whole house hold. When I asked about the new arrivals mom informed me that due to the drought my aunt and the kids moved to Hargiesa for the summer, and that they will reside in the two servants rooms in the back of our house. As for the animals the Mama goat is a gift for me and the baby goat was a gift for my doughtier Layla. I accepted this gift against my better judgement, not that I had any choice in the matter.

The fact was that as usual my mother has made one of her out of the blue, make you scratch you head decisions such as moving families, bringing goats, and building a new kitchen in the back of the house. As expected I was supposed to sit there and watch the drama unfold, at least that was my plan till I was somehow forced to be a part of the whole thing.

My blessed gift started the whole drama the first night of its arrival. I woke up when I heard some noise in the back of the house, fallowed by the sound of both goats. It sounded like most of the reqous was being caused by the mother goat. My first thought was “Oh Shit the dammed things are being abducted.” so I woke my sister Shukri and proceed to the back to check what the problem was. In the mean time my mother wakes up, sees us and immediately assumes that we came outside to smoke. What fallowed was a big blow up between all three of us, accusations, shouting, and even some hand to hand combat. As I said before lets not get away from the story after all it is about a goat.

 After my mother realized that the house was not big enough for all the new settlers she created a commotion with me in the middle of it just because I complained about the mother goat who made a b line for my prize, maybe not so much prized flowers, that I planted and were surprisingly blooming into actual tulips. After that she decides to move my aunt and the kids to another house, off course I was the askape goat for this move. I was completely blamed and was told by my mother that I was making everyone uncomfortable, when my only concern was the damn flower, and plant eating mama goat.

My gift has become a trouble making nightmare. In a couple of days my poor untie and the boys moved to our house in the middle of the city, yet the animal in question remained. Also the next day I look in the backyard and there it was the grandmother goat that I was told arrived by truck from the country to join her family just that morning. I started to pay close attention to the goat’s and I notice that the mommy goat is always making noise, hitting her baby and is just mean. By now she is eating us out of house and hold, and is giving nothing back except for a half a cup of milk a day that my mother whitens her tea with. I started to develop a dislike for my gift, and having evil thoughts about accidentally leaving the front gate open for her to take a long nice walk to never return. Yes I feel bad about my bad thoughts, but what can I say, the goat is not nice.

I came close the other day to getting rid of my present when we found out that she was missing. My first thought was “good” then second, was “Shit” knowing my mothers reaction to her missing and the blame placing that will follow. The search and rescue was deployed, short of a Helicopter sweeping the area from the sky. After a few mixed emotions on my part, mostly about what about the milk for the afternoon tea, and the little money I might have brought if the thing was sold, I settled for a final thought which was “good reddens.”

I realize that it serves me right if I’m accused of kicking a horses gift in the mouth, but I don’t really care, I might seem to some people that I’m  ungrateful yet I don’t give a flaying F. the thing is my gift although giving to me in good thought, turned out to be the gift from hell. To ease the mind of any one that might have sympathized with this goat “She is baaaaack!” after Abdi the gate keeper who was responsible for watching them searched high and low for her, he walked in with her in toe, maybe not in toe necessary, but definitely fond. I’m happy for him that he found her, since his job was on the line, but I can’t say that I’m delighted that the Khat, eating, tea drinking, baby kicking and fence jumping goat is back in my life.

By Mohamed Omer Hashi

Recent Claims made by Haatuf Newspaper, a Somali language daily against the Minister of Energy and Minerals Hon. Hussein Abdi Dualeh are absolutely baseless and a result of slanderous publications, meant to smear the good name of the Minister.

Somaliland government usually offers international oil companies’ terms which are as competitive as those signed elsewhere and the government willing to ensure the sanctity of the production-sharing agreement contracts.

The existing production-sharing agreements are signed and written to international standards unlike the libelous publications shows clearly there are forces that are willing to go to great lengths to derail this progress.

To date Hon. Hussein Abdi Dualeh has conducted his duties with impeccable credibility and transparency in accordance with existing constitution and all the existing oil deals have  been executed legally contrary to libelous reports carried by Haatuf Newspaper http://www.haatuf.net/2012files/8549.html  which alleged that the energy minister is working in cohorts with brokers in Somaliland who have been crafting clandestine oil exploration deals as alleged Haatuf Newspaper falsely citing  a report released by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea.

This is not the first time the Somali language daily has printed the false allegation against the honorable minister without providing substantial evidence to back their accusations greatly damaging to the credit and reputation of the paper in the future.

One is left to wonder what is motive behind this wild allegation by Haatuf is it that the articles were meant to gain increased sales or to garner political mileage  in the short term or perhaps  the paper is been paid and used by other forces who have vested interests with  sole intention  to discredit the honorable minister or even derail the progress made by the country as a whole?

It’s a high time the editors of Haatuf Newspaper should know there is no point stating rubbish like this if you can’t provide decent evidence to back up your rash and completely baseless statements and which is unethical which is meant to tarnish the name of a reputable civil servant.

The Minister Energy and Minerals Hon. Hussein Abdi Dualeh is so dynamic, committed and has implemented numerous reforms and modernizations at the ministry whereby the results are actually visible everywhere. Minister Hussein A. Dualeh is a member of a government that steadfastly is committed to fulfill its social responsibilities towards Somaliland citizens.

This government is inspired by the trust of its people and believes in their ability, collective sense of social responsibility, good governance, and transparency. 

By Goth Mohamed Goth

The Minister of Health Dr. Saleban Ahmed Essa (Haglatosiye) who is currently in Finland on a working tour has meet with top ranking officials in the Finnish government among them the deputy Prime Minister Mrs. Juttta Urpilainen and the Minister of Education Mrs. Krista Kiuru just to name a few.

The Somaliland Health Minister went to the European country in order to renew the previous agreement which expired recently and to sign a new agreement for the next three years known MIDA FINNSOM Health project with the Finnish government after the previous one ended recently and which is a demand driven and based on priority needs identified by local authorities and project partners in Somaliland.

The Health Minister briefed his Finnish counterparts of the achievements since the country broke away from the former Somalia, he started by saying, “Somaliland has its own constitution and has already held two presidential and three local government elections in what international observers termed as the most free and fair electoral process in the whole of Africa not to mention 97% of its people voted YES during the referendum held in 2001.

Somaliland Minister of Health went on to say “Since Somaliland broke away from the union with the Somali military government led by Siyad Barre back in May 1991, Somaliland has overcome many hurdles with major rebuilding of the country’s infrastructure starting from bottom after everything was completely destroyed including shelters, schools, hospitals, roads as well as other buildings in almost every major Somaliland cities.

Dr. Saleban “Haglatosiye” was flanked by the former head of Somaliland Diaspora Agency Mr. Suleiman Mohamed Farah.

On the hand the Health Minister attended a dinner party held in his honor by members of Somaliland Diaspora living in Helsinki, Finland.

Recently unearthed Remains of Genocide Victims in one of the Many Mass Graves Scattered around the Country

By Abdirahman Mohamed Dirye

Unlike South Africa’s and Rwandan’s perpetrators appearing in Truth Commission, Open Courts respectively, Somalia’s former war criminals in Somaliland’s 1988 Deadly War live feely in the world not just with immunity but with privilege being rewarded with ministerial and deputy heads of state posts. Furthermore, Somaliland’s so called foreign minister, insensitive man to the pain, and suffering of his unfortunate folks, retired from his job at the UN to Somaliland, system accountable to none to suck bone marrow of the remaining victims of Siyad Barre and on behalf of junior lad signed the word atrocity deliberately rather than genocide or massacre signaling that Somaliland victims have died in vain! In contrary, He launched what he called “economic diplomacy” which he meant to collect advances of millions of dollars from raw material hungry China and the West major oil firms to dry up the national resources of the unborn generations in weeks! The soil is for sale, and maritime resources are free for Thailand fishers in return of few bucks. During his launch of this inhuman policy, he signaled no more search for recognition “we want money, money, that is” .

Are Somalilanders less value than Darfurians or countable Kenyans who died in post-election violence?  International Criminal Court still wants Kenyan sitting president to be brought to the court for the sake of just one thousand people died while ignoring more than fifty thousand innocent Somalilanders whose lives perished at the metal belt of the moving tanks and shelling civilian populated areas in major cities in Somaliland according to this conservative number.  However; any number of loss of lives are bad, but what double standards! And what gross injustice!

While Hamish Wilson, a foreign journalist with heart deeply attached to this people who firsthand witnessed the magnitude of death and destruction in Hargayas in 1991 wisely stated what occurred there “…, genocide happened here (Somaliland) but the world ignored”, Bihi Yonis and his bunch of ignorant laymen signed atrocity which is not just understatement of the tragedy but insult to us because most dictionaries define atrocity as wicked act, and nothing to do with killing whatsoever.  In fact, Kenyan grown friend of mine told me atrocity can be described about if car goes off the road and runs into tree killing its occupants brutally! Is this what happened here? Waar ma gaadhi baa ina la dhacay! If so let it be.

Similarly, in the sixties agitated ignorant bunch of drivers led by late Ibrahim Egal, escaping from educated fellow countrymen and women  like late Somali Lawyer and Writer Yusuf Duhul, went to Mogadishu and scrapped Somaliland independence in return of few MPs and education minister or similar! At least five decades later, Somaliland has been thrown into worst level of degradation by immoral insensitive conmen who represent none other than their vested interests. We, Somaliland public, never learnt any lesson from the history. Now Hirsi and his ilk hired Bihi Yonis as an interpreter for tribal business delegates— because national parties were excluded then they lost domestic legitimacy— how else do you explain some one trained  at the Harvard do this to his people if he was an fit and independent?   Looking back Somaliland turbulent history, Somalilanders feel regret and start biting tongue.   Always things go wrong not because they are enormous but the people in the steering are feeble and narrow-minded mobs.

Somaliland statesmen are lacking leadership, maturity, and diplomatic dexterity. Somaliland never produced a leader but plenty of clerks who either worked for the UN or other countries. I observed one thing Somaliland born clerks are good at working for foreign parties since colonial era “Sudanese men in Saudi Kingdom labor like slaves but they oversleep in their country!” President Al-Bashir is said to say this.  Was Yonis Bihi Okay when he accepted atrocity to describe 50, 000 deaths minimum according to Africa’s Watch? He accepted few hundreds of victims in Darfur to be the worst massacre since Rwanda Genocide when Collin Powel and Koffi Annan called the few rebel deaths “the epicenter of major earthquake (referring to countable deaths of Darfur) which the West blown out of proportions for political motives but rational people of the world understood by saying US led West is shedding crocodile tears to dislodge working president who rejected western lecturing and dictations.

Where the disastrous journey will end? Where inconclusive talks will end?  Let us expect the best of the both worlds. Hope springs internal.  

Suad Abdi, a founding member of the National Women’s Network, Nagaad, is determined to run for office in Somaliland. Photograph: Cathy Scott/Progressio

Female activist Suad Abdi hopes to shake up system by standing for parliament, which has one woman among 164 MPs

Women face few restrictions in Somaliland, the self-declared independent republic in the north-western corner of conflict-ridden Somalia. They can work, own property, and be vocal on social issues. But politics remains a man’s world in the former British protectorate, an oasis of stability in the region.

There is only one woman among the 164 MPs and just three in the cabinet of 40. There is not a single female judge in Somaliland, although in 2012 four deputy attorney generals were appointed for the first time.

Abdi, a founding member of the National Women’s Network, Nagaad, and country representative of the charity Progressio, attributes the lack of women in politics to the male-dominated clan system. “Most political parties get support from clans, which decide who should become candidates and the clans don’t put women forward. The clans want men because they know where the men’s loyalties lie. When women marry, their loyalty changes to her husband’s clan,” says Abdi.

The clan a woman is born into tends to be reluctant to support her if she marries into another clan, yet her husband’s clan may suspect she remains loyal to her own clan. Somaliland, home to 3.4 million people, consists of three main clans with eight sub-clans.

Abdi belongs to the Isaaq, Somaliland’s largest clan. To shake up the republic’s political order, Nagaad and other civil society groups are pushing for changes in the law that would set a 20% quota for women in parliament, in the runup to elections at the end of the year.

An attempt in 2007 was blocked by the House of Elders, the conservative upper chamber, and a bill in 2012 ran out of time. The president, Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud Silanyo, is on record as favouring quotas, but Abdi doubts he is 100% committed, while parliament, she says, thinks it is the responsibility of the government to take the initiative. Both favour a 10% quota. “The ball is between parliament and the president,” says Abdi, who thinks 10% is too low.

Some question whether quotas are the solution to women’s under-representation in politics, but Helen Clark, who was prime minister of New Zealand for three terms and now heads the UN Development Programme, has no such doubts. “I think if nothing else is working, you should have quotas,” she said at the Women of the Year lecture in London last week.

“One of the things that improved representation here in the UK was Labour’s women-only shortlists. Women are now much more numerous in the House of Commons. We reached the 30% representation in New Zealand, which is a millennium development goal, because we switched to proportional representation, partially, and parties had to put women on the party lists.”

Quotas are increasingly common in sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2003, Rwanda has led the world in women’s representation in a single or lower house of parliament. After the 2013 election, it had 64% women in its chamber of deputies. Nearly a dozen sub-Saharan countries top the world list, with more than 30% women in their parliaments. The first countries to adopt quotas in the 1990s and early 2000s were emerging from conflict such as Burundi, Eritrea, Mozambique and later, Angola.

Seeking a fresh political start after war, these countries adopted new constitutions and electoral laws that included quotas, Gretchen Bauer, professor and chair of political science at the University of Delaware, wrote on the Democracy in Africa blog last month. Pressure from national women’s movements with support internationally and a liberation movement with a stated commitment to women’s emancipation helped.

Other countries have since jumped on the bandwagon: Kenya, Lesotho, South Sudan, Sudan and Zimbabwe and for the first time, Francophone countries such as Burkina Faso, Cape Verde and Senegal. Somaliland has to look only next door to Somalia, which has 35 female MPs and a female foreign minister. The constitution has reserved 30% of seats for women in the lower house, although the actual numbers – 38 of 275 – total 14%. Still, that is much more than Somaliland, which prides itself as more politically advanced than Somalia.

Although Abdi is determined to run for office, she has no ambitions to become a minister. “When you become a government official you are accountable to the president and there is very little room for change,” she says. “Leaders take criticism as personal attacks rather than constructive feedback, and you become a ‘yes person’. I have my own views; I am not that kind of person.

Source: The Guardian