The European Union has given Somalia 158 million euros ($200 million) to improve education, the legal system and security, its new envoy said on Saturday, as the Horn of Africa nation tries to recover from more than two decades of conflict.

The new aid programme follows the election in September of a new Somali president, the culmination of a regionally brokered, U.N.-backed effort to restore central government control and end fighting that has killed tens of thousands of people.

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, elected in the first vote of its kind since Somalia slid into civil war in 1991, is grappling with corruption, an Islamist insurgency and piracy along the country’s strategic Indian Ocean shipping route.

“After 21 years, the government is finally rebuilding the systems of a functional state at local, regional and central levels,” Michele Cervone d’Urso, the EU’s special envoy to Somalia, told Reuters.

“The EU is more committed to work directly and in partnership with Somalis. We will ask the implementing agencies to work more closely with the government and civil society.”

A suicide bombing in the capital Mogadishu on Saturday highlighted the challenges faced by the new Somali leader .

The development aid package, the largest EU programme ever approved for Somalia, will go towards strengthening the judiciary, broken state institutions, the Somali police force and the country’s blighted education system.

Some funds will be used to bring home Somali professionals abroad to help improve education standards.

In the past, Western and regional states have pumped in millions of dollars of humanitarian aid to help Somalis affected by conflict and frequent natural disasters. African governments have sent troops to combat al Qaeda-affiliated militants.

Somalia’s residents have complained that most aid organisations have operated from neighbouring Kenya with little involvement on the ground, which has bred resentment.

President Mohamud called for more aid, and for assistance to be channelled directly through the new government.

“Although there is global economic crisis, our new government has been requesting the world to increase funds and change the ways Somalia has been getting funds in the last two decades,” Mohamud told a news conference in Mogadishu after the launch of the aid programme.

“We requested them to have direct a relationship with Somalia.”

Despite being on the back foot, al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militants still control swathes of rural southern and central Somalia. Pirates and local militia groups are also fighting for control of chunks of territory. ($1 = 0.7785 euros) (Additional reporting Abdirahman Hussein; Editing by George Obulutsa and Rosalind Russell)

– REUTERS

1 COMMENT

  1. $200Million is a start More funds are required if these people are serious about Security.

    20,000 Amisom troops get $1200/Month. = $24Million

    200/24 = 8.33

    8.33Months is How quick that $200Million we be depleted. You see that money is directed at only Amisom Troops and it will only help them for 8.33Months. Now we know why Uganda wanted to pull out??? 🙂 they must have not received any funds since Change of President in moqadishu.

    What of the Somali troops?

    Will some of these funds be used for the Somali troops? If YES

    Then it might not last 6Months… I guess Uganda will threaten to pull out in another 6months time to get more funds?

    Of the $200Million given to Ugandan troops only $2Million are given to the Troops for their Use in Somalia $198Million goes straight to Ugandan Banks.

    EASY MONEY – Why can't Saracen trained troops in Gerowe simply replace them and collect that easy money?

    • Man you just surmising, uganda is a militarily poor country and they've already send half of their arm forces to somalia while DR congo government is equipping the ugandans rebels; You can't assist someone else while your own life is in danger man

  2. The white man has realized through time that wen it comes to places like Somalia if you cant forcefully
    control them (meaning their boots on the ground) then there's always the other option of
    just dangling the carrot/money at the end of the stick.