Poverty in Somalia

Village community meeting, Baidoa, Somalia (Photo: UNAIDS/L.Taylor)

The absence of a strong central government since the overthrow of the military regime in 1991 has condemned Somalia to constant lawlessness and violence, leaving very little capacity for delivery of any of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The lack of meaningful human development data precludes assessment against targets and is the cause of Somalia’s omission from the UN Human Development Index. The dysfunctional economy is dependent almost entirely on remittances from the sprawling Somali diaspora, estimated at over $1 billion pa, together with foreign aid which is predominantly directed to emergency relief rather than development.

Where information is available, the indicators rank Somalia as amongst the worst in the world. For example, although access to primary education is believed to have improved, gross enrolment of boys was only 37% in 2006, with girls trailing at 25%. An MDG progress report published in 2007 assesses adult literacy as below 20%.
Food Security in Somalia

Poor school attendance is caused partly by the nomadic existence of large segments of the Somali population. Almost 70% of the workforce is dependent on subsistence farming or tending livestock. Poverty indicators are therefore vulnerable to the unstable climate conditions experienced in the Horn of Africa region where years of severe drought are punctuated by widespread flooding, a profile likely to be aggravated by climate change. 2008 appears likely to bring a second successive failure of the main gu harvest - cereal production in 2007 was described by the World Food Programme (WFP) as the “worst in 13 years”. The secondary deyr rains at the end of 2007 also failed totally. The result is a food security emergency in the central and south regions of Somalia, with estimates of the numbers requiring assistance undergoing rapid upward revision to 3.5 million by the end of 2008, almost half of the population.

The WFP ship taken by pirates, Somalia © United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network

Two factors threaten to plunge a hotspot of food insecurity into a humanitarian disaster. First, the global explosion of food prices which squeezes the capacity of poor communities to cope with crop and livestock failures has hit Somalia particularly hard. Aid agencies are reporting price increases of 300% for staples such as rice and maize. Second, the delivery of food aid is seriously obstructed by the anarchic conditions of a conflict zone. The UN has been forced to pass a resolution allowing international naval vessels to enter Somali waters to defend food shipments against rampant piracy. On land, road transport is forced to negotiate its way through the country’s estimated 400 roadblocks, each operated by gun-toting militias demanding arbitrary payment. A tragic development in 2008 has been the targeting of aid workers, culminating in the murder of the acting head of UNDP in July.

These impossibly difficult conditions for delivery of food aid may explain in part the underfunding for the UN’s emergency appeal for $641 million. There is also concern that Somalia has become a forgotten emergency, suffering donor fatigue and media blackout. Meanwhile, the renowned resilience of the Somali people is being tested to the limit with rates of malnutrition exceeding emergency levels - Unicef reports that one in six children under age five has acute malnutrition.
Health in Somalia

Women bring children for health screening © Espen Rasmussen / Medecins sans Frontieres

Drought conditions have also created severe water shortages, forcing household dependence on expensive water tankers for drinking water. In 2006, less than 30% of the population enjoyed access to safe water, a situation which, combined with malnutrition, exceptionally low rates of immunisation and limited protection against malaria, ensures that Somalia has very poor health indicators and high child mortality rates. The maternal mortality rate is over 1,000 per 100,000 live births. As with food security, the continued violence most affects the poorest households, preventing the creation of a viable national health infrastructure. Care may be available only from clan-based local institutions for which fees are often levied. This fragmented structure also precludes efforts to reduce the high instance of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Somalia - 95% of girls in rural areas undergo this traditional practice before the age of twelve, suffering serious potential medical complications.

Somali women leaders at NGO conference - November 2004 © United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network

By contrast, a national programme of polio vaccination involving 10,000 volunteers coordinated by aid agencies - in response to outbreaks in Mogadishu in 2005 - appears to have been successful. And until recently, the incidence of HIV/AIDS was officially classed as “low level”, comparing favourably with regional experience. However there is concern now about the concentration of the virus amongst high risk groups, especially within the intense activity of ports and border crossings. Amongst the population in general, prevalence is below 1% but AIDS programmes are disrupted by the conflict and the level of awareness of risk behaviours is believed to be very low. Progress with polio and HIV/AIDS has been made possible in part by the determination of hundreds of local NGOs which flourish in Somalia and for which a degree of national coordination has been established.



The OneWorld Somalia Guide was first published in January 2006 with a text written by Volunteer Editor Jonathan Uglow.

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