*Blessed;943863 wrote: I'm surprised that came from you, Chimera. Somalis have been building and rebuilding the mother land for decades without the connections and money this man clearly has access to.. Nothing on a major scale (outside of Ahmed Jama and the Turks), its all safe bets compared to the massive projects they are constructing in non-Somali countries. This guy however built a large resort on Somali soil, and sold it to the United Arab Emirates, how can I hate on that? He was already in the country at the behest of the US and the Sharif government as a mercenary, at-least this venture provides jobs and adds to the infrastructure.

It is in our interests that characters such as him see more value in a peaceful Somalia than a war-torn one.

LINK Personally, I think they should have kept the minaret as a free-standing structure with a big open-courtyard for prayers in the open, another building could be constructed for indoor prayers. The courtyard would be reached through several pathways featuring arches. This would make the mosque very photogenic as well, a new symbol for the city.

Actually this is great news, not only does Mogadishu get a nice fancy seaside resort, the Somali entrepreneurs themselves will follow suit in building grand projects, rather than the safe-bets of cafes and restaurants. Not to forget the other Western and Asian real-estate developers are no doubt following the project. While we don't realize, or comprehend the value of Somalia and its location, the country is prime real-estate.

Somali capital braces for business boom with improved security By Chrispinus Omar MOGADISHU, April 26 (Xinhua) -- There are signs businesses are getting a new lease of life in the Somali capital Mogadishu. The sheer numbers of newly-opened beauty parlors and newly erected business signage around the ruined city affirm the determination of a nation to turn a new chapter after 22 years of civil war. The financial sector appears to have thrived the most during the country's slightly over two decades of war. The scale of the expansion registered by the locally incorporated money transfer services that have kept the country's 10 million people going during the war is not in doubt throughout Mogadishu. Ladan Express, one of the indigenous Somali cash transfer service providers opened in 2009, is already extending its presence in the Horn of Africa country. The money transfer service firm is slowly molding into a local commercial bank, Ladan Express Bank. The others also follow suit, the Al Mushtaqbul... The long queues of petroleum tankers snaking its way to more than 2 km off the main seaport and the number of trucks loaded with freight waiting to deliver supplies outside the city is a sign of new life. "What we are experiencing is a new window," Ahmed Abdi Kaarie, the deputy director of the Mogadishu Seaport, said in a recent interview in the capital. "You can tell that there is need for foreign investments everywhere. We need professional companies to assist us in evaluating what is required," he added. Somali President Sheikh Hassan Mohamoud is more excited about the pace of progress, but worries that the newly found vibrancy on the streets of the capital might be lost if stability is not restored. The kind of stability he envisions is more permanent, backed by the institutions that his country is rebuilding. "We feel if we do not succeed soon to achieve a relatively secure Somalia, we might not move," he warned. The Somali leader said a number of business laws have been presented before parliament to get the economy going after several years of inactivity. Among the laws and business legislation his administration is prioritizing are those dealing with the private sector. The government has also put before parliament a proposed petroleum law, a separate bill to govern the minerals sector and another law on the fisheries sector. "Some of these laws have been re-modeled. Some of them are new, some are law reviews and we hope that once they have been endorsed, we can move forward again," President Mohamoud said. "We need international partners. We are focusing on privatization. The private partnership is the way forward for Somalia," he explained. Talks are already underway with several foreign firms to secure stakes in the country's seaport. Port officials did not disclose any names, saying the negotiations were ongoing with the government. The Somali President said apart from working harder to implement his election pledge, which comprises six pillars and which he has narrowed down to just two broad themes, capturing security and the institutional reforms, his government is also working on revitalizing bilateral ties with foreign governments. Before a meeting with the Somali president last week, he had to receive credentials from two European diplomats. In total, a record number of 30 diplomats have been accredited to Mogadishu in recent months. "We are going to make our financial sector reforms to work," the president said, speaking of his six-pillar agenda that lays emphasis on reforming the security sector, public sector reforms and enhancing transparency in the management of the public finance to effectively deal with corruption. Somalia is casting his fishing net wider across the world. The president's plea is for the world's maritime giants to take advantage of Somalia's vast maritime resources, explorers to venture into mining and for the neighboring Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, to encourage the Somali entrepreneurial acumen. "Somalia is a land of opportunities. We have 3,300 km of coastal line that gives us an opportunity to develop our maritime capacity. We have 10 million people and we have 8 million hectares of farmland. This is a very rich country. The people of this country have not benefited. We need stability," the president said. The president's list of pro-business law reforms run deep, but he remains upbeat that a major step towards achieving his dream of reforming the judiciary has made a big leap forward in recent weeks. "We have just completed a meeting with all the Somali lawyers and people from various sectors to discuss judicial reforms. This meeting has already proposed a list of priorities that would help us move forward with the reform of the courts and how things would be done in future," he said. LINK

Would you go back to Somalia if you’re given a grant worth of 100,000 U.S dollar to invest in the country to generate new resources? If your answer is yes, then it’s time for you to design your project and head back home. That’s at least what one international agency is offering to the Somali Diaspora. After two decades of civil war, security and stability in Somalia is improving. One place in particular, Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia where the sound of daily gunfire has been replaced by the noise of construction. This little progress has attracted many including international investors. In February of this year (2013), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has said that it will provide a grant worth 1.5 million U.S dollars to finance innovative Diaspora projects in Somalia in a new initiative to tap investment. IFAD said amounts ranging from 20,000 dollars to 100,000 dollars will be provided to implement projects such as cross- border investment in agriculture, improve food security and increase rural employment. The launch of the agricultural project follows a recent call by the Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to its Diaspora to invest in the reconstruction of the country said IFAD. Somalis living abroad send home well over one billion U.S dollars each year, which equals up to 50 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). On top of that, many go back home each year, to open small businesses. But in order to prevent future food insecurity, the country needs an investment in the agriculture sector which can be practiced to any extent. If there was ever a time to invest in Somalia it is now. The country is emerging out of over two decades of crisis; security is improving and a semblance of stability is taking hold. Investing in the country is crucial- to ensure that the recent progress is not reversed. The question is will the Somali Diaspora answer the call or they will wait “until the country becomes peaceful again”? LINK ...

That's a good initiative, make them do something productive, these skills will help them once they're outside the walls. They or their families should be paid though for this labour, otherwise its just slavery

Once the debt has been cleared, priority should go to food-self-sufficiency and rebuilding the energy sector, and add more power-plants. This will significantly aid the reconstruction of the country, and stimulate more business and trade, as the prices go down.

Averagely, each cargo ship brings in goods with a conservative value of 5 million U.S. dollars, which means trade generated from the renewed activity would easily hit 200 million dollars a month. That's great news, another Somali port generating more than a billion dollars annually. A 10% tax fee should be imposed, that would increase the Federal budget by $240 million from the Mogadishu Port alone. That's more than enough to reconstruct the city independently, and get a fully functioning and paid security apparatus in place for the Capital. Since the Baidoa-Mogadishu Highway has been declared safe, and the Afgoye corridor is open for business, more income could be generated from exports of agriculture.

So this is what the leader of the inaar-inkaar crew keeps himself busy with when not torturing innocent maids? Alphy son, I am disappoint. The entire topic is filled with melo-dramatic crybaby nonsense hoping for Oscar glory, while in the process raping the countries and cultures the films are set in. What a waste.

Alpha Blondy;943580 wrote: i agree. the way and more particularly the manner in which Saffz's turkeys defecate is spectacular. balse are their faeces worth more in gold to her than the potential they have to cure the leper? Alphy, not everyone enjoys smearing themselves in bird-poo like you do, inaar lolololololol.

ZzzZZZzzzz...

God bless the Somali Republic

War slap these these poor fisherman on the wrists, record their names and then let them go, and keep your eye out for the big trawlers coming from Spain, France , China and South Korea that literally steal billions worth of fish. They catch in a minute what these poor fisherman work for a month.

Safferz;942093 wrote: Thanks SP, that's the second article I was trying to remember. Chimera, let's kill the argument, it's not a debate either of us seems willing to concede.

Safferz;942072 wrote: You began this discussion by contesting my classification of Somali society as predominantly oral (a historical fact) Actually I had no such intention, I just pointed out the general historical reality, which was the majority of the world was illiterate up until the 1950s, hence we could classify the world as predominantly oral (a historical fact, outside of China) It was a genuine case of trivia. , and I was asking you what motivation is for calling that into question and emphasizing Somali writing. The attention oral literature is given is at the detriment of our written heritage, that's a good motivation by any standard. I am just trying to understand why you de-emphasize the centrality of orality to Somali society, and place written texts on par with oral literature in terms of cultural production when we just don't have the documentary evidence to support that assertion . Why is that? Tell me this, and you will have the answer to your own question. Recovering new texts will not displace orality's historic primacy either. It would in subjects such as history, economics and language,or should I say anthropology. A single manuscript called the Futuh-Al-Habash eclipses anything you can recover in oral literature when it comes to an important historic era that shaped us a people. That's where you're wrong -- oral history is intrinsic to the field of African history, and a central research method precisely because of the absence/limited number of textual sources. Textual sources that are stored in private libraries that remain unaccessible, of course oral history will by default have its importance increased on that fact alone. However once that textual sources are actually given a proper study, then the study of Somali history becomes much more illuminated and accurate, and the current dependence on oral history becomes less. Archaeology, historical linguistics, and oral history are all tools in the Africanist historian's craft, and all of these methods developed because of the challenges of reconstructing history in a continent where orality is dominant. As I said before, much of the world was oral, there were a few spots on the globe that practiced mass-literacy such as the Chinese dynasties and the Caliphates of the Islamic Golden Age. This is why you have nationalities and ethnic scholars from around the world going through sources not in their native language to get a better understanding of their own histories, despite the availability of local oral history. In Somalia's case, there are many things we could gain from giving written sources as much attention as oral literature. While we have foreign sources mentioning Somali sultans, they always omit the names of their wives and daughters. A native scholar however would include them, the same way a oral historian does. What's your point? Our interests in history is not necessarily always based on trying to prove something to the "West", in fact for a people with a small population like ours, living in such a hostile region bordering multiple dangerous empire building waterways, I think our ancestors did quite well, though their modern descendants are a disappointment.

Wadani;942069 wrote: Goormaad market-ka ku soo noqotay. Adeer cidhiidhiga naga daa aanu kaa kalluumaysanee. Weligey waan joogay, sxb, haye waan ka leexaana, shukaansiga sii wad. Lakiin, ogoow inaad A-level kaga soo dhigtiid waaye, Safferz ha ku ciyaarin.

A few days left:

I resent that.

Niyow, I thought I was flirting.

Safferz;941630 wrote: I'm not disagreeing with you on the importance of recovering texts, but I find the motivation problematic. It's a recovery project predicated on apologia for being oral, for not having what Westerners would recognize as literary greats, canonical texts and a rich body of literature. Umm...that's quite a stretch from what I originally said. I think you're confusing my reference to colonialist tactics with me trying to look for the latter's approval/recognition, when it was their methods I was emphasizing. The same methods post-independence Somali governments and scholars adopted and ran with. In this situation the motivation behind recovering old written literature is justified, as for more than 50 years this important body of work has been horrible neglected in favor of oral literature. If the roles were reversed, I would have been just as passionate about recovering and preserving our oral heritage. Much of Western literature is self-created hype, and the historical audiences of Somali scholars were in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. BTW: There is nothing wrong with that, unless you believe writing is somehow better. Written literature is extremely important for subjects such as history, which is what I'm interested in. One of the reasons we have so much material evidence of a rich history in the form of old cities, castles. mosques and art, but little info on the Somali dynasties and States that constructed them is because of the utter neglect towards our homegrown written sources. Oral literature has helped little to shed light on these enigmatic historic episodes. Hawa Jibril, Halimo Godane, and Raha Ayanle, to name a few from the nationalist era. It's unfortunate that no one remembers the poems composed by women, but their poems are important too. Wouldn't it be a fallacy if I now insinuated that your motivation behind highlighting Somali women writers and poets is to create your own versions of Jane Austin, and the Bronte Sisters, when in fact you are simply emphasizing the importance of studying the Somali experience from a broader perspective?

Haatu;941541 wrote: Chimera, everything you've said is besides the point. Its not, unless your moving the goal-post. The reality on the ground today (and unarguably yesterday) is that Somalis are fiercely loyal to their clans. That's because there is nothing strong enough to be an alternative, Somalis are a pathetically poor people, with little to show for today because of this so-called loyalty, yet this reality and its cause has never really sunk in the minds of the masses. A well-functioning state making economic progress is a strong alternative, powerful companies that employ hundreds of thousands are a strong alternative, a popular football league on the same level of professionalism and entertainment as those of Europe or Latin America is a strong alternative. That's what I'm working on, and I have feeling its closer to reality than D-Block, or HAG, etc on a future Somali library card.