Can we conceive of a world without hunger, coercion or violence, a highly industrialized Somali nation where the resources of the country aren’t used by a minority for profit making but for the well-being of all, imagine high-speed rail traversing through Golis mountain ranges arriving at a Somali city where arts and sciences flourishes with distinctive architecture wide boulevards flanked by green Acacia trees, your ears hearing qaraami street music…

There is a quote often used by western leftist to illustrate how deeply entrenched prevailing economic ideology is: “today, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” which in our case would be the end of burburka – a catch-all term describing the mayhem and confusion resulting from the civil war – and those of was who have given into pessimism have lost all hope, and those of us who are optimistic have become a caricatures of themselves cheering the status quo for their stylistic appeal, one should be deeply pessimistic about the status quo in our country but at the same time be optimistic about the future possibilities, provided that we overcome the dominions of our potential, We must produce pragmatic propositions to uplift our country, just being against the system won’t yield any results, nor endless critical analysis will inspire the folks to better themselves, but first we must dare to imagine a better world, I dare say we must be utopian in our thinking since we live in brutal society where coercive authority emaciates with one hand and enriches with another, any alternative to this will appear utopian, heck even impossible, because we’ve internalized the values of that brutality, that’s why we must imagine, we must carry a better future in our hearts, but at the same time we must be pragmatic. Pragmatism simply meaning: caring about the practical realities of how to implement things – At its best, utopianism is pragmatic, because it is producing blueprints, and without blueprints, you’ll have trouble building anything. With that in mind I will try to sketch an alternative socio-economic system but fearing of being too technical and boring, I will interject it with small utopian imaginations

In my essay natural resources – a blessing in disguise? I detailed how our meager resources where squandered and utilized inefficiently by policies enacted by the colonizers and continued by our own national leaders, failure of creative thinking and malicious greed on the part of our leaders led to this miserable state of affairs. but bygones be bygones, in this essay i will try to propose an alternative path and how it would look like, In the first part of this essay i passingly mentioned participatory development but i didn’t define it, Wikipedia defines it as:

Participatory development (PD) seeks to engage local populations in development projects. Participatory development has taken a variety of forms since it emerged in the 1970s, when it was introduced as an important part of the “basic needs approach” to development. Most manifestations of public participation in development seek “to give the poor a part in initiatives designed for their benefit” in the hopes that development projects will be more sustainable and successful if local populations are engaged in the development process. PD has become an increasingly accepted method of development practice and is employed by a variety of organizations. It is often presented as an alternative to mainstream “top-down” development

This “bottom-up” form of development should be the basis for our thinking about progress since the prevailing models of development (either state-led or market-led) that we have experienced for the past half century with its core idea of development being something that is done to people instead done by them, and to the surprise of no one, producing results that are counter to the needs and wishes of the majority, but if the people are empowered and woken up from their slumber, with fanatical zeal they will build their own future. We shouldn’t think of development as some sort of a phantom that we have to sacrifice our first born to, nor as some military drill that locks us into a collectivist jail, but it’s a process where free ordinary people come to terms with their surroundings, the only prerequisite for just development and real progress being freedom, you might ask aren’t we free? In Somalia like most of Africa, ones socio-economic position is determined by his/her clan/ethnicity and its proximity to coercive authority (State), meaning if you have family links to political authority your lot in life is little bit more tolerable but since state politics is inherently a minority-rule, this is only true for a tiny minority but for the vast majority it means tolerating hunger while seeing bakhaar full of imported foods, tolerating governments that spend annually 1 billion dollars on something that is neither felt or seen, tolerating endless political games meant to monopolize donor funds, tolerating the division of that miserable majority into rival camps (qabiilism) ensuring they never point the finger at them, and at top of that clergical class in cahoots with the elites preaching perseverance (sabr) to forget their hunger, to forget this earth itself, in other words preparing them for death because living is only for those who can afford it.

I won’t describe in this essay how we will build social movements that will replace this status quo, that’s another topic for another day, but in this essay i will skip that and i will talk as if we have gotten rid of the status quo as if its a new day and we are starting from scratch, i will describe in detail how we could potentially progress from point A (poor and under-developed society) to point B (Industrialized and developed society) using ideas from Participatory Economy (Parecon), Participatory Development (PD) and lastly Anarchist/Socialist thought.

The Economy

The hopeless don’t revolt because the revolution is an act of hope Peter Kropotkin

The principle of all economy consists in obtaining the relative maximum result from the least relative effort. This principle alone should be sufficient in rejecting the present order of capitalism which in Somalia with its rent-seeking, dog-eat-dog form, seething saliva from its mouth for ever greater profits leaving the people emaciated and idle, quite contrary to obtaining maximum results from minimum effort; the waste is enormous, churning out death and despair without utilizing the natural resources, technical abilities nor human ingenuity to produce more desirable outcomes

We do not live as we could live — as we should live!

What are the factors of production?

First: Nature, which furnishes man with raw material and certain natural forces.

Second: Human Labor, manual and intellectual, which elaborates and utilizes the raw material.

Third: the Machinery which multiplies the power and the intensity of human labor

The form of Capitalism which is prevalent in our continent has been unable to intelligently utilize natural resources with exclusive focus given to easily exportable resources which has led to ecological degradation and soil erosion, with ever growing desertification and loss of fertile lands, you see countries in Africa, which are net food and energy exporters (exporting Foodstuffs,Petroleum,Uranium etc) yet at the same time experience widespread hunger and electricity cuts, with ever-growing underutilized labor both manual and mental, which in Somalia barely mobilizes a fraction of the population (unemployment rate in Somalia: 67%) producing widespread discontent and insecurity. Human intelligence hasn’t been used to even imagine more suitable forms of economic and social organization for the betterment of all, but on the contrary endless amount of labor (both intellectual and manual) has been spent in satisfying foreign markets, you can see this in our own country which is emerging from the civil war: in the agricultural sector we’ve seen impressive growths in cash crop sector (we are 12th largest producer of Sesame seeds) re-emergence of the banana industry, and you see in fisheries sector growth in dried fish exports, all the while widespread hunger is increasing, crippling men women and children. And Lastly machinery which would increase the yields of our farms, uncover metals and ores from the bowels of earth, taming the ravages of natures with its cyclical famines and floods, empowering people and making their lives easier have been even before the war inefficiently utilized by the Communist leadership and after the war with all industrial equipment sold for scrap metal by the warring militias, we must reconstruct them to be used for the satisfaction of various needs and wants of the people.

The new participatory economy will be in the hands of the workers and the community, and it will have no other motive, no other finality, than the satisfaction of the needs of the people. The

consumer will not simply signify a market, s/he will not be urged to purchase the products but

the products will be elaborated to satisfy his/her wants. After the social revolution has succeeded in suppressing private property and the parasitic power of capitalism and state, with it will disappear the slavery of wages, interest, rent and profit. We will return at last to an economy of common sense, by which all the wealth will be produced through the medium of the coordination of the three essential factors of economy — land and its natural forces, human labor, and the machine. On the maximum consolidation of these factors will depend the standard of life in the future, which means that it will be in our hands and in our will to realize the welfare and the happiness of this world.

Ethiopian garment worker

Councils

The only possible alternative to being the oppressed or the oppressor is voluntary cooperation for the greatest good of all. Errico Malatesta

The nucleus of this economy will be the worker-owned enterprises or co-ops organized democratically from bottom-up with linkages with other enterprises through councils of production, delegating for the purpose of coordinating economic activity for maximum efficiency, these re-callable delegates will not be the planners of the economy but as intermediaries for various enterprises and their function can even be simply be replaced by computer algorithms, and since every worker is also a consumer there will be councils of consumption based on the households, neighborhoods, towns cities and regions by organizing their various needs from basic food requirements to large industrial undertakings and everything in between, and by negotiating with the various councils of production reaching a concensus where the capabilities of production are linked with consumption. Where nothing is under-produced nor over-produced leading to an equilibrium.

This is the abstract description of Participatory Economy formulated by two left-libertarian economist Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, although they were describing a highly industrialized country (like USA) where most of the production is internal to the economy, these ideas can also be useful to our under-developed country and with this line of thinking I will also deploy participatory development models to inquire if we can develop without employing harsh methods of developmentalist states of the past century. And without sacrificing our core values of popular participation, democracy, social ownership, solidarity and equality.

Organizing for the greatest good of all

The fuel that will drive our development will be the intrinsic enthusiasm of all individuals to better their lives by giving them the driver’s seat in coordinating, producing and allocation of the whole economy and by proxy creating a complete democracy.

Installing a central coercive apparatus would not only be impossible but also be counter-productive for two two reasons, 1) the cost of central bureaucracy would deplete developmental funds 2) turning men and women into machine, working to the tempo of their revolutionary leaders would mire the whole system into inefficiency (eg. state-socialism). This is an economy of free agreement among free people, organized from peripheries to the center, leaving all decision making in to the hands of the community and the producers delegating for the sake of coordinating their production. Since there is no coercion that binds people there would be no reason for secession. We don’t want to enforce our blueprint on everybody, we expect diversity and experimentations, even respecting small family properties in rural areas to organize as they see fit as long as they allow us the same right, we even admit different organisms, some more or some less revolutionary, some more and some less friendly to the new situation The important thing is, that all Somalis have a minimum of necessities which must be satisfied and to which we must contribute through the process of our organizing. We will conquer those who view us hostile, by our example of labor and by the efficacy of our plans.

On the path to upgrading our primitive economy based on livestock and cash-crop export will inevitably go through number of stages, first being Agricultural: in matter of few years we must become food self-sufficient by intensifying food production by investing heavily in rural infrastructure by building roads,small dams, fisheries infrastructure, agro-processing plants and etc.with that move to Light industry: textiles, tanneries etc. and lastly into capital-intensive Heavy industries. This will be accomplished by maximum co-ordination of our efforts and pooling our resources into a developmental fund, we must increase our hard currency inflows and decrease its outflows, we can primarily accomplish this by decreasing our food imports by investing in our own agriculture, and also we should start small-scale mining and refining operations of our vast mineral resources to fund development, with large known limestone reserves we must also invest in cement production to build our basic infrastructure but simultaneously we must construct large scale power plants (coal or gas) with national grid system moving away from the local diesel generators with inefficient micro-grid system. Cheap and stable domestic energy will be the basis for our industrialization. I will consider these in detail next.

Population Demographics

In 2014 UN did a thorough demographic analysis where they found the population to be 12,316,895 with 5,216,392 (42%) living in urban areas, 2,806,787 (22.8%) in rural areas, 3,186,965 (25.9%) Nomadic and 1,106,751 (9.0%) being internally displaced (IDPs), with estimated growth rate being 3.0% and in 2020 the latest population estimate was 15,785,020 with similar demographic composition. With 67% of the population unemployed and 70% of them living under the poverty line, with abysmal health outcomes, and half of them food insecure, the paradigm shift that will occur from the social revolution must see to it that all our people are fed, clothed, housed and cared for, the success of the revolution depends on it, as Kropotkin would say “If there is hunger the day after a revolution, then the revolution has failed“

Food Production

Council of Farmers

Somalia’s total land area is 637,540 km2 , of which 30% is classified as desert land unsuitable for agricultural production, 45% is covered by range-lands suitable for livestock grazing, 14% is covered by forest or woodland, and the remaining 11% is classified as arable land (7 Million Hectares) of which less than 10 percent of it is utilized with primitive farming techniques, even with this inefficiency we produce 50% of our cereal consumption (200 thousand tonnes), SATG estimated that if we improved the per hectare yields by better farming techniques and employing fertilizers and pesticides without even cultivating more lands, we could satisfy our domestic cereal demand, with modern green-houses with drip-irrigation techniques can be employed in water-scarce areas of northern Somalia and even newer seawater greenhouse technology which produces in Australia (in its dry coastal regions) 15% of the country’s tomatoes. Charlie Paton (the inventor) experimented cheap stripped-down version of this new technology in Berbera and with success, he proclaimed that with the $1.4B (the total food aid budget for Somalia) he could build 16 000 hectares of seawater greenhouses producing astounding 4.8 million tonnes of vegetables, I calculated that similar results could be obtained if only the total annual Somali governments budgets ($1.0B) were utilized for that social purpose. But since food aid like security is a multi-billion dollar industry its existence is too lucrative for our elites to do away with, but the revolution will see to it that we employ these modern technologies and the ingenuity of our people to feed themselves.

Council of Fishermen

a UNDP report estimated that in 2005 in Puntland, which is equal to about

one-third of Somalia’s land area, there were approximately 1,687 artisanal fishing vessels including motorized watercraft, sailboats, and canoes. These 1,687 vessels have the potential capacity to bring in a total of between 84 and 253 MT(metric tonnes) of fish per day, depending on the season, based on the estimated capacity of between 0.05 and 0.15 MT per day per vessel.Using the provided average annual catch value from the Sea Around Us Project of $1,416 per ton, these vessels combined have the potential to bring in catches worth between $119,406 and $358,218 each day.



If these Somali fishermen alone utilized all 1,687 operational vessels every day of the eight-month fishing season, fishing income could theoretically total $87 million each year. However, this

estimation is based on numerous assumptions that are, in reality, unlikely. First, it assumes

the fish would be processed and frozen in a timely manner, but the necessary processing

facilities currently do not exist and would have to be built. And once built with with factories to process the fish, to freeze and package the fish, with refrigerated trucks going up and down the coast to transport the fish to inland towns and cities, with post-harvest losses resulting from lack of refrigeration minimized this would greatly improve the production of fish, subsequently becoming a staple food source for the many.

Council of Pastoralists

The livestock sector dominates the economy, creating about 60% of Somalia’s job opportunities and generating about 40% of Somalia’s GDP and 80% of foreign currency earnings. Despite many problems including insecurity, exploitation of pastoralists, political instability and bans by some major importing countries over the past 18 years, the number of animals and meat exports has grown. Somalia currently exports 3 million sheep and goats, 176,000 cattle and 11,000 camels per year valued in $190M/year, with estimated livestock population of 5.1M cattle, 8.4M camels, 21.9M sheep and 26.6M goats, with potential capacity to produce annually (given the proper infrastructure is built) 586 million liters of cattle milk, 1.3billion liters of camel milk and 442 million liters of goat and sheep milk.

Although the practice of pastoralism has been ecological destructive due to overgrazing, after the social revolution with the pastoralist empowered, they will not be forced to over-produce but with technical assistance, building new roads, wells and small dams to not only prevent flash floods that occur yearly in Northern Somalia but these dams once filled can be used as water reservoirs for small-scalle farming and pastoral use (eg. Xumboweyn dam), this is a natural progression where strictly transhumant pastoralist are steadily becoming sedentary and taking up agriculture, agro-pastoralism as it is called will be the next phase of livestock production as foreseen by many specialists on this topic. After this natural sedentarization, a new labour force will be realized which can be directed to other sectors of the economy.

Council of Collective Kitchens

In towns and cities cook and waiters would form an important part of the food stuffs branch since there would be great saving of not only time and energy in the collective kitchens but also charcoal too since it is the only source of cooking fuel in Somalia, doing away as much as possible with the home kitchens. Overnight, by reason of a better distribution even without an average increase in production, there would be no one starving and no one suffering from overeating. This would be the first step of the revolution in the foodstuffs industry. Until the necessary means of increasing supplies has been developed, the average ration will be the same for all. This would be controlled by an adequate statistical service under this council. The food production council would see to it that in every locality each inhabitant gets a fair ration, either in the collective kitchen, which would do away with the drudgery of housework, or in the houses where individuals would still insist in maintaining the family kitchen.

Industrial Production

Rubies found near Borame source: garbadadar gemstone dealers

Council of Mining

A very thorough study commissioned by IIED (international institute for environment and development) on the effects of ASM (artisanal and small-scale mining) in poor developing countries claimed that

At macroeconomic level, the production of high-value metals (gold), gemstones and minerals from small-scale mines can make a major contribution to foreign exchange earnings. As gold for instance is more or less a standard “currency” the produced value is equivalent to extra foreign income. This is particularly the case for artisanal small-scale mining, where no considerations of “repatriation of utilities” of foreign investors are taken into account, as the “investors” are the very own local miners. In this case the value of artisanally produced gold can be considered as a net contribution to foreign income, as freely convertible “currency” is produced with pure local input. It does not really matter if payment is received in form of converted currency (“dollars”) or in form of imported goods (“refrigerators”). In any case the livelihood and wealth of the involved communities, and herewith the wealth of the national economy are beneficiary.

Another study claimed that large-scale mining operations which are dominated by foreign firms in Africa generate on average less returns to its host countries then the less productive local small-scale miners.

silver ore locations source: range resources

Our main way of earning foreign exchange today is by exporting livestock and to a small extent cash crops, since in our early stages, we want to increase the production in the food sector by building fisheries infrastructure, roads to connect rural areas, small dams, wells etc, and for that we need to buy industrial equipment to build Cement and Asphalt plants and other equipments, since we don’t want to exploit rural producers to obtain funds like most developmentalist states did, and also getting development funds from international institutions is out of the question, we ought to develop small-scale mining schemes to mine the known deposits of tin in Majiyahan-Dhalan area which was mined by Hungarian company before the war, silver deposits in Qandala which are according to range resources (Australian company) analogous in scope to Jebeli silver mines in Southern Yemen. Gold deposits in Arabsiyo, and gemstones in Awdal region and etc. and likewise implementing small-scale smelting and refining operations in port cities to increase their value before shipping them out, and subsequently sourcing funds from them to develop.

This might sound peculiar but there are historical analogues to this; during the Park-chung-hee regime in South Korea, the government would send its workers to Europe and Gulf countries to earn foreign currency to fund industrialization in the country, as many specialists in this subject tell us far east Asian countries during their growth years (60’-70’) would employ all kinds of creative ways to increase hard currency inflows and decrease it’s outflows from the country. As a side-note when Park’s regime tried to get funds for Steel works from World Bank they rejected it, on the grounds that the country didn’t have any iron ore and was too under-developed to operate one, but in few years they built one on their own and today South Korea is one of the top producers of Steel, perhaps this tells us something about comparative advantage free-market televangelists preach about.

Council of Construction

According to UN we are among the least developed country in Africa, even comparable countries have more infrastructure then we do, contrary to popular opinion this isn’t because of the conflict, but an interesting elite attitude, that concerns itself only on collecting as much rent as possible before their turn is over and they have to rotate the seat, this fact is illustrated by the fact that even world bank has recommended we re-build our cement industry to build our basic infrastructure, which they estimated would cost about $50M to put this on perspective the federal government spent in 2019 alone over $10M on office utitilies and travel expenses, and $20M on professional consulting fees, meaning we don’t lack the capital to build our own infrastructure but since our political class has to repatriate as much loot before their turn is over, nothing productive can be accomplished, often this attitude turns out to be even counter to their long-term interests, best example of this was seen with the Bosaso seaport project which was signed by Abdiweli at the end of his administration, getting a handsome kickback from the project which he also used to bribe the Bosaso elites so they could agree to the deal, and now for their shortsighted greed has made them loose the source of their wealth – they must be expropriated for their own good – There was an incident that really could’ve taught something to our elites, when a stranded merchant ship was unable to dock at the sold seaport, the people quickly organized and made a makeshift port to save the cargo, showing us once again the futility of elite attitudes for development. Once we get rid of the parasitism of our state and elites, we can focus on building our infrastructure, we have ample limestone and gypsum reserves, we have idle hands that are yearning for work, we also have young engineers and geologist ready at moment notice to build their country, in this rational economy with maximum co-ordination of all productive forces, we wouldn’t fear unemployment but labor shortages due to the scope of work ahead of us but that also could be solved by slowly getting more workers out of the labor-intensive sectors of our economy (pastoralism and subsistence farming) or even migration could solve it.

coal outcropping seen in erigabo

With this we must turn to energy generation, it would simply be uneconomical to drive this development with our current diesel generators with inefficient micro-grid system, although we have known onshore oil and gas reserves estimated in billions of barrels and even uranium ores, but we cannot utilize them with our current industrial capacity, in the mean time we need cheap domestic fuel source we can utilize to build up our industries, this is unfortunately coal, which is found all over northern Somalia, coal isn’t only a vital energy source but its important part in cement production ( 1 tonne of cement requires 200kg of coal) its also important in steel-making, it would be suitable later on making steel from our own iron resources. Today the developed post-industrial countries are slowly phasing out their coal usage selling their equipments cheaply in second-hand markets in the third-world countries, even many African countries have started commissioning new coal plants with even cheaper Chinese equipment, slowly lighting the dark continent, to the cries of many environmentalist, but since we are the least polluting continent, if this polluting technology is used only temporarily to mitigate our infrastructure gap and technological primitiveness, and above all hunger then I believe we are justified to utilize it.

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