Ideas for economic recovery in Somalia

[Warsan_Star_Muslimah]

Search for natural resources, I keep seeing Somalis boasting about Somalia having this and that, but I always read Somalia lacks natural resource

Whats up with that?

The Government should concentrate on helping the people who have been ravaged by the civil war, but they should also encourgae Somali Business people to invest in the country.


Salaam

[Amethyst]

James D',

Ive got an Uncle who is a xoolo dhaqato. He lives about 30 to 40 km away from nearest big city. With the many of the recent droughts, and the harsher dry seasons (I wanna say due to global warming or whatever) most of his cattle have died off. He still owns tons, for which the majority source of his food and other items necessities are obtained. We provide for him as well, but for the life of us cant see why he he wont just pull the plug on the whole thing and simply move into the city like the rest of the relatives for greater economic opportunities and better conditions. How would something like this work for him? Would he need to ride into the city all the time to sell the items, he'd made from his camels and then return home to the deserted areas? He would obviously get money for it, buy what he needed at that moment, barter or whatever they do down there. I'm sure if we were thinking about this economic recovery plan from an individual stand point, it'd work for him. To get it to work on a wider scale Someone like him would prolly need more people to do it with him, have us send more money from here to invest in, maybe even to buy more cattle with. Who would buy the items? Aside from the city folk? People in other regions? People in other countries? I agree with many previous postings that better infrastructure such as roads and bridges are badly needed. Who is to build them tho? The newly elected government? How....through taxes? Foreign Aid? There has never been a lack of a resource problem in Somalia.....Its always been a lack of a distribution and useful purposes to them.

This is actually precisely the problem that the woman who invented Camel Cheese faced. Distribution, distribution, distribution.

http://www.tiviski.com/index0-uk.html

In Mauritania, the company Tiviski established a pasteurization and distribution system, and the herders sold the milk to them, and Tiviski handled the whole distribution, processing, packaging, sales etc side of things. It works as something of a cooperative and they have thousands of herders that they get their milk from.

Basically speaking, if a company based in Galkacyo for instance had all the infrastructure to deal with the the milk pasteurization, UHT treating, cheese making, packaging and distribution side of things, and had a few trucks, then the trucks could go out to the country, collect the milk and pay the herder, bring back the milk to the processing center and then ship out the final product to the other major cities and the domestic market.

With UHT camel milk, it'll last for months, even years, and can be shipped out internationally, as does camel cheese.

James, Do you know whether the FAO had any hand in helping her get started? i.e any development grants, resources or road paving projects in making her task any easier? And out of curiosity, does the Mauritanian terrain differ vastly from that of Somalia? I can see how someone with tons of money could come in and make a very profitable business venture out of something like this. It almost seems knuckle-head simple, tho I'm sure it'd be hard setting it up initially. I remember reading about something like this a few years back on the BBC Africa Page. The same lady, is it?.

A camel typically produces about five litres of milk per day, but that could be easily improved with changes to the low-tech business, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation."The potential is massive. Milk is money," says FAO dairy and meat expert Anthony Bennett. "No-one's suggesting intensive camel dairy farming, but just with improved feed, husbandry and veterinary care daily yields could rise to 20 litres." Fresh camel milk fetches about a dollar a litre on African markets. Mr Bennett says that with the right investment, a global market worth $10bn (£5.6bn) is entirely possible.

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pageto ... 930120.stm

[James Dahl]

Here is the capital of Mauritania, Nouakchott:




The whole country of Mauritania is like northern Somalia, dry, sparsely inhabited and pastoral.

The pioneer of the Camel dairy in Mauritania was Nancy Abeiderrahmane, who arrived in Mauritania in 1970 and found it very strange that the country imported most of it's milk products despite having a gigantic population of milk-bearing livestock.

There's something of her story here:
http://www.lpps.org/2008/04/interview-w ... ane-of.htm

When Nancy Abeiderrahmane arrived in Mauritania in 1970, she was surprised to find that the country relied on imported milk products despite its large population of livestock. Realizing that dairying could make a big difference to the lives of people in this arid country in northwest Africa, the engineering graduate designed and built a small dairy plant in Nouakchott in 1989 to process camel milk.

The Tiviski Dairy, of which she is CEO, now buys camel, cow and goat milk from over 1000 semi-nomadic families and processes them into a range of products including pasteurized milk, ice cream, yoghurt, lassi, butter, and camel milk cheese.

The unique biochemistry of camel milk renders it difficult to process into products like cheese, so her efforts were path-breaking and an inspiration to others. Ms Abeiderrahmane is a recipient of the 1993 Rolex Award for Enterprise for her work in Mauritania.

At a workshop organized by Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan on The Camel in Rajasthan: From Heirloom to Unique Selling Point in April 2008, Ms Abeiderrahmane told the audience about the potential, problems and rewards of running a camel dairy in Mauritania.

There's a PDF file here that might be of interest to you:
http://www.lpps.org/docs/TiviskiCEOapril08.pdf

The PDF document talks of how the Mauritanian camel milk industry success could be replicated in Rajasthan, India, but would be just as applicable, if not more so in fact, to doing the same in Somalia.

[American-Suufi]

mauratania is an oil and other mining resources producing nation. they sit on billions of $$$$. who will pay for somalia's?

james it is good the camel products business for nomads but it cant sustain a whole nation. and no sane country, bussiness or organsiation will invest somalia when somalis have an anarchic mentality.

try eritrea.

[James Dahl]

mauratania is an oil and other mining resources producing nation. they sit on billions of $$$$. who will pay for somalia's?

james it is good the camel products business for nomads but it cant sustain a whole nation. and no sane country, bussiness or organsiation will invest somalia when somalis have an anarchic mentality.

try eritrea.

Uh, Mauritania's #2 and #3 exports are fish and fish products. #1 is iron ore and #4 is gold, both of which are all owned by rich French companies that don't reinvest in the country, so that leaves fish.

Mauritania is not a rich country by any stretch of the imagination. If they can do it, Somalis can do it.

[American-Suufi]

Uh, Mauritania's #2 and #3 exports are fish and fish products. #1 is iron ore and #4 is gold, both of which are all owned by rich French companies that don't reinvest in the country, so that leaves fish.

Mauritania is not a rich country by any stretch of the imagination. If they can do it, Somalis can do it.

also the fish exports r in trouble. if mauritania is camel republic remember in somalia we have bananas too. we always were a banana republic.

Mauritania bans most fish exports to feed locals 05 Nov 2008 20:54:42 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Vincent Fertey

NOUAKCHOTT, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Mauritania banned most fish exports this week to try to meet domestic needs, angering local fisherman and those workers laid off by fish factories.

Mauritania, an arid country at the western end of the Sahara which boasts rich fisheries off its Atlantic coast, was among the countries worst hit by a surge in food prices earlier this year as it depends heavily on imports of staple foods like rice.

"This ban is intended to redirect output to prioritise the needs of Mauritanians, who have a right to eat their own fish," Fisheries Minister Hassena Ould Ely told Reuters after the ban took effect.

But the export ban on three popular fish, imposed from Monday by the fisheries minister installed after an August military coup, flies in the face of advice from some economists that curbs on exports risk disrupting vital food industries.

The ban covers sea bream and two species of grouper known locally as thiof and merou, which together account for around 80 percent of fish exported from Mauritania by local operators.

"I cannot accept that Mauritanian fish is cheaper abroad than in Mauritania. This measure will lower the price of fish on the local market by rebalancing supply and demand," Ely said.

The ban does not affect ships operating offshore under a deal with the European Union which nets the Mauritanian government 86 million euros ($110 million) a year.

But with the vast majority of fish landed in Mauritania heading for export, fishermen have been reluctant to head out to sea and fish factories in the capital Nouakchott have been forced to shut down this week.

"The minister is naive to think that by stopping the export of certain varieties, all fish will end up on the local market. On the contrary, we think exports support the whole industry," said Lemine Ould Katari, who has had to suspend operations at his fish factory in Nouakchott.

Of 100,000 tonnes of fish a year landed in Mauritania, all but 30,000 tonnes are exported, according to a World Bank study.

The fisheries sector employs around 39,000 people -- or 4 percent of the active workforce in Mauritania -- most of them in land-based jobs such as the fish processing factories.

"At this pace we'll be closed down within a week," said Mohamed Ali, a fish exporter. "I employ 50 people but I've had to let them go. I just can't pay them. (Writing by Alistair Thomson; editing by Elizabeth Piper)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L5416252.htm