Economic activities back to Mogadishu

[Chimera]

MOGADISHU (IPS) - In the Hamarweyne market, Mogadishu’s largest, 24-year-old Maryama Yunis is finding success with her tiny cosmetic store. The young Somali entrepreneur has been in business for two years, selling everything from soaps and shampoos to lipsticks and eyeliners, and now she’s turning a decent profit.

 

“As more and more young women in Somalia grow increasingly aware of their looks and like to take care of themselves, the cosmetics business has naturally grown and I took the plunge to meet that demand,” Yunis told IPS in Mogadishu.

 

Yunis is one of a growing number of women in this traditionally conservative Muslim country who are going into business because of the opportunity to attain financial independence and upward mobility.

 

Even educated women in this Horn of Africa nation are expected to focus on raising families, but attitudes are shifting alongside women’s role in society, says Hawa Dahir, a social activist in Mogadishu.

 

“Times are changing in Somalia and people are now more aware of the entrepreneurial potential of women and are more accepting of the role women can play in the economy of the family and the country as a whole,” Dahir told IPS in Mogadishu.

 

Yunis herself is a university graduate. She studied nursing but opted to pursue her dream of becoming an entrepreneur instead.

 

“With my mother’s help, I managed to convince my father to allow me to follow my dream and start the store. With the money I am earning, I am becoming more independent by the day and I’ve become an inspiration for many young women,” Yunis said.

 

But for many women, entering the world of business is not a choice but a necessity forced on them by the death or unemployment of their husbands, according to Dahir, who studies women in business.

 

Faduma Maow has a shop in the Bakara market in Mogadishu, where she has been working as a clothes trader since the death of her husband three years ago.

 

The mother of four told IPS that she takes her children, aged between seven and 15 years, to school before heading to the market.

 

“It is tough being a working parent, but it can also be rewarding. I am financially independent and pleased to say I am making progress towards my goal of raising a family and building a stable future for myself and my children,” Maow said.

 

Dahir said that while there are no reliable statistics on Somali women entrepreneurs, their presence in the country’s small business scene is “palpable”.

 

“Many women have started businesses here in Sinai and other markets in Mogadishu,” Rahmo Yarey, owner of a teashop in this busy market, told IPS. “I also hear that the same thing is happening in markets in the regions. Women are becoming breadwinners for many families in our country.”

 

Women are involved in a range of small businesses, selling clothes, cosmetics, fruit and vegetables, or khat – the leaves of the Catha edulis shrub, chewed as a stimulant in Somalia.

 

Women can also be found selling fuel in open-air markets and on street corners in Mogadishu.

 

And they are doing it all with very little assistance.

 

Somali businesswomen say working as an entrepreneur has its challenges. Firstly, it is nearly impossible to raise capital to start a business.

 

Local and international financial institutions closed down following the collapse of the central government in 1991 that marked the beginning of two decades of civil war.

 

A couple of local banks have now been established but one handles only savings and remittances from Somalis in the diaspora. The other does offer loans, but only to those who can put up collateral, which few women have.

 

“It is not possible to get money to start up a business – even more so if you are a woman,” Aisha Guled, a khat trader in Mogadishu, told IPS.

 

Guled herself got her start only thanks to support from a relative. She said that she has been struggling to make ends meet since she started selling khat.

 

“Most of us have started with the little we could get and struggled up the ladder. Some don’t make it, others remain stuck in the beginning, but some are lucky enough to break even and make a profit soon and expand,” she said.

 

Though the Somali government says it is trying to do all it can to help businesswomen working to support their families, one official told IPS that the government cannot at this stage offer financial support to businesswomen. “The provision of a secure environment for women to operate in is a key priority in supporting women in business,” the official said on the condition of anonymity.

 

“Despite all the challenges that women entrepreneurs face in Somalia, the country’s womenfolk are showing that they are up to the challenge of being shrewd business operators, while maintaining their roles as mothers and wives,” Dahir said.

 

She called on academics to study the rise of Somali women in the business sphere as well as in politics and other fields in society.

 

Yunis said that as Somali society’s views and attitudes towards women’s role change, she expects more and more women to take up roles not only as entrepreneurs, but in academia and politics as they prove themselves to be equal to men in every aspect of life in Somalia.

 

“It is just a matter of time before we see many women join men in equal measure in rebuilding our country because our society is changing thanks, in part, to the changing times; women will be more equitable to men in every area,” said Yunis.

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[Haatu]

I don't understand what the reporter is insinuating. Somali businesswomen are not 'rising', they're already there. Go to any market in the Somali peninsula and I'll guarantee most of the sellers are female.

[Homunculus]

I'm sorry if I sound picky but most of the new building look extremely ugly, where is the beautiful traditional Somali architecture?

[Chimera]

[oba hiloowlow]

Chimera;951720 wrote:

[Chimera]

Welcome to Mogadishu

 

One brightly painted brick at a time, the shelled-out city is coming back to life. Along Mogadishu’s tree-lined drags, shopfronts form a tableau of hope. Outsized poster-paint impressions of burgers, fizzy drink bottles and doughnuts daub walls where bullets once made their mark. Renderings of hairdryers, laptops and pressure pumps advertise the high-tech wares inside. Walls and gates are painted the same bright powder-blue base which matches the sea, the sky and the national flag.

But the revival goes beyond shopkeeping. Scaffolding shapes the skyline, livestock and fish markets are back in action and women plunge into the sea from stunning white sands. Surrounded by the crescent of ruins that cradles the old fishing port, I speak to a young fisherman as he smears the hazel sludge of sea lion liver oil over upturned boats. He says he hopes Somalia’s latest government, formed in 2012 in the most legitimate process in years, will last.

 

The turnround is so impressive that the new government predicts the economy will soon be growing at 10 per cent, up from 2 per cent last year.

Statistics are hardly the strong point of a country that hasn’t had a functioning government for 22 years, but the World Bank estimates that a robust informal economy – led by exports of livestock – contributes to a GDP of close to $3bn (

BS

). Expatriate remittances, at about $1.6bn a year, have long kept the country going, fuelling a dynamic private sector that has run successful telecoms, energy and construction companies in the absence of state regulation. In the past 18 months, remittances have risen by almost 20 per cent, says Abdirashid Duale, chief executive of Dahabshiil, a Somali money transfer service. “As the security situation improves, more and more people are returning,” he adds.

 

Trade unions talk about a revival in agriculture, hotels and port activity. Their members have battled al-Shabaab threats and imprisonment to turn out regular market data reports, logging the fluctuating prices of camel milk, jerry cans of diesel, goats and imported red rice in Mogadishu’s Bakara market.

Today Somalia has more than 52,000 trade union members.

One fish processing company, the Somali National Fishing Company, exports to Dubai and Turkey, flying several tonnes at a time. “We plan to export to European, Arab countries,” says Abdirashid Mohamed, standing beside a catch of swordfish lined up on top of deep freezes. “We’ve been speaking with Holland about starting there.”

 

The latter is thanks to the upsurge in commercial flights. In little over a year, the number of aircraft landing a day has risen from three to 12, says Ahmed Ibrahim Iman, a 29-year-old airport manager. Dubai and Turkey both run commercial airlines into the beachside city, and import fish, fruit and meat from Somalia. But it is a costly tale of recovery. Ahmed’s father, Ibrahim Iman Halane, was airport manager before him and was assassinated last year. “He was killed in town – he went to pray and when he left, two al-Shabaab attacked with pistols,” says Ahmed, explaining that his father’s job made him a target. The revival of the airport is, like the functioning courthouse, among the most telling symbols of Mogadishu’s recovery. “Al-Shabaab say it’s about religion but it’s not – it’s politics.”

 

Now Ahmed drives to work with only blacked-out windows for protection. “Maybe Shabaab will attack me,” he says. “I can’t accept to sit at home so I’m working – I’m ready to die like my father.”

. . .

 

The city ignores al-Shabaab.

The Chamber of Commerce says it has registered 260 companies in the past four months alone, bringing the total to 351

, in sectors ranging from internet services to agricultural exports. “More than 35 per cent are [owned by] diaspora,” says managing director Abdi Dorre, himself a one-time refugee who was taken in by Sweden in the 1990s. Among the returnees – whom the UN estimates at more than 60,000 last year – is twenty-something Guled Garane, who until December lived in London’s Camden neighbourhood, where one street is named “Somali Road”.

 

Garane was a mortgage underwriter, but decided he could probably make more money by returning to the country he left aged nine. “I saw property prices going up and rents going up; land prices have hit the roof. I saw it was time to get in and see it for myself,” he says over a jug of freshly squeezed lemon juice in a heavily guarded Mogadishu hotel. A year ago, a five-bedroom rental was $500 a month, today it is $4,000, he says of one of the world’s more unlikely housing bubbles. “A lot of people are investing – houses in Mogadishu are now fetching $1m, can you imagine that?” Last year, he says, the same properties would have gone for $100,000-$150,000, figures echoed by several playing the property market. “It just went 800 per cent up and there is no economics to sustain it. People have serious money. But you can’t tell yet if it will last or if it’s just speculative.” --

Read More: Welcome to Mogadishu

[Taleexi]

May Mogadishu prosper.

[Haatu]

Chimera, I might have good news. I was just hearing the minister of commerce speaking and he insinuated (I think) that foreign businesses will need to enter in joint ventures. He was talking to Rugta Ganacsiga Soomaaliyeed (Somali Chamber of Commerce). He also said they are currently preparing the necessary laws (investment law etc.).

[warsamaale]

what is the use, its just benefiting one city and one clan. xamar is not the city people have in their minds. time to move on

[Mario B]

warsamaale;957360 wrote:

what is the use, its just benefiting one city and one clan. xamar is not the city people have in their minds. time to move on

Don't let clan supremacists delude you. It's in the interest of all Somalis to bring peace to Xamar.

[warsamaale]

I want xamar to be peaceful and prosperous sincerely, but the facts remain it will henceforth always be a single clan city sadly.

[Mario B]

warsamaale;957437 wrote:

I want xamar to be peaceful and prosperous sincerely, but the facts remain it will henceforth always be a single clan city sadly.

I think you are using todays reality to paint the future, Xamar in 2 decades or less will be a majority non HAG/Unuka city as Somalis from all corners of the Somali lands come to make their fortune. Just imagine Mogadishu as a 8 Million metropolis and then you will know what I'm talking about. We just need to cut this petty clan animosity and false fault lines we keep erecting.

[Chimera]

^Brother, don't bother with the reincarnated xabad.

 

Haatu, that is excellent news, and a recipe for a Somali owned booming economy.