Acheson Prize

3rd Place — Reexamining Bureaucracy in the Context of Somalia’s Telecom Success

Posted on by Beata Fylkner
SomaliaTelecom

Since the overthrow of former President Siad Barre (1991), Somalia has had neither a state nor a bureaucracy.1 After three decades marked by failed peace conferences, externally sponsored state-building attempts, and widespread violence, the image of Somalia as the epitome of state collapse and lawlessness has been virtually cemented.2 Responding to this, arguably reductionist, narrative, recent literature has posed that Somalia is doing better, not in spite, but because of its lack of bureaucracy, often highlighting the country’s flourishing telecom industry as an example.3 There are many reasons to study Somalia’s telecom industry – one of the most competitive in Africa, providing millions across the world with cheap and clear calls. Beyond complicating the conventional image of a country in chronic decline, Somalia’s telecom industry challenges Weberian assumptions about private and public bureaucracies – distinguished by their efficiency, rationality, and durability – and their relationships with each other and the state. Contrary to what is suggested by those who seek to weaponize Somalia’s telecom industry to argue that free markets, minimal state intervention, and even anarchy yield economic development, however, this is not a story about everything Somalia lacks, but about everything it has.4 

An examination of the ways companies have navigated the need for capital, tribunals, and security in Mogadishu (void of bureaucracy) and the unrecognized state of Somaliland (whose state and bureaucracy date back to 1991), provides a case study with which to understand what the telecom sector needs to thrive. What emerges is a recognition that the story of Somalia’s telecom industry really is a story of Somalia’s constant migration and the juxtaposition between its volatile political institutions and its enduring social structures. The success of Somalia’s telecom industry demonstrates how unique features of Somalia’s history have enabled its population to trade using trust and tradition, as well as to leverage informal (i.e., nongovernmental) systems to produce complex private bureaucracies. But as demonstrated in the comparison of companies’ trajectories in Mogadishu and Somaliland, there are challenges to sustaining private bureaucracies without the stability and authority of a state. The telecom industry presents a way to explore the potential and the limitations of informal systems and reexamine what may be considered efficient and durable in a Somali context, and in the end, offers new angles from which to approach the country’s prospects for stability. 

Weber’s belief in the “availability of continuous revenues” as a prerequisite for bureaucratically structured enterprises seems a “given,” as does the fact that telecom companies require capital to operate.5 The issue of insufficient funds confronts businesses across the world, yet the challenge facing Somalian businesses is not merely a lack of capital, but a lack of (conventional) financial infrastructure. According to Weber, rulers do not “dispense or replace the bureaucratic apparatus once it exists”6 because of its “technical superiority over any other form of organization.”7 In the case that it is “interrupted by force,”8 chaos ensues, as the “fate of the masses depends upon the continuous and correct functioning of the ever more bureaucratic organizations of private capitalism.”9 Somalia’s Central Bank, banking system, and (at least formally) its national currency, crashed with the government in 1991, and have not been restored.10 Yet, a glance at Somalia’s imports and exports or gross domestic product (which frequently outcompete other African states) suggests that the market has prevailed.11 Absent a financial infrastructure and the role of public bureaucracies in managing domestic and international trade, how have companies compensated?

Some authors attribute the sector’s success to the lack of taxes and the fact that “business is essentially pure capitalism.”12 As summarized in an Economist article: “The trick is the lack of regulation.” Disregarding the fact that companies in Mogadishu and Somaliland do pay taxes (to armed groups and its government, respectively),13 this literature’s failure to consider the more fundamental questions of how businesses can store, move, and exchange money leaves much to be desired.14 A second category of responses focuses on the deficiencies of the postcolonial bureaucracy. In an assessment of Somalia’s development, Peter Leeson concludes that Somalis are “better off under anarchy than they were under government,” and that the growth of economic sectors can be ascribed to the absence of a predatory state.15 From a Weberian perspective, the inefficiency of the former bureaucracy might explain why Somalia’s society never came to rely on bureaucratic structures, and why their collapse has had limited repercussions. As explained by Leeson, poor economic management, deteriorating economic conditions, and decaying public institutions had led to the emergence of parallel markets already in the 80s.16 Following the normalization of trade smuggling and black marketeering, “the alienated urban private sector was forced to join the informal markets,” according to Jamil A. Mubarak.17 It is easy to critique the Somalian bureaucracy that emerged following independence and this might suffice to explain why there was not a noticeable negative change in conditions following the collapse. What is more intriguing is the positive change since – the fact that Somalia, since 1991, has moved from the 29th to the 8th African country in terms of main lines per 1000 of population.18 Good or bad, the mere absence of a bureaucracy cannot explain the emergence of Somalia’s telecom sector. For that, we must look beyond the formal systems.  

Dating back to precolonial times, when nomadic pastoralism represented most Somalis’ way of life, the most important currency in Somalia has been trust. Like the four million Somalis that live as pastoral nomads today, many generations of Somalis have had to develop extensive networks, allegiances, and means of communication to manage the lifestyle of constant movement.19 Drawing on the work of Göran Hydén, Gregory Collins argues that “Somalia’s economy of affection was born of a geographically interdependent livestock economy predicated on long-distance trade and interconnectedness.” As a result, a uniquely segmented, hierarchical, and institutionalized clan system formed, providing Somalis with a “clan-embedded basis for protecting private property, enforcing contracts and resolving disputes that is national – if not international – in scope.”20 Michael Van Notten reinforces the last point, contending that Somalis long have “dealt with foreign governments and their agencies on a clan-by-clan basis.”21 Somalia’s clan system is widely recognized for its role in the organization of Somali society, but it is almost exclusively understood as an impediment to stability. The telecom sector suggests that there might be more to the story and that trust, when institutionalized, might prove both efficient and durable. 

As other countries and their bureaucracies have gained complexity, so have the informal systems through which Somalis engage with the world. When Somali laborers began working in the Gulf region in the 1970s, communities adopted the informal system of Hawala, enabling laborers to send home money with the help of remittance organizations. Since the collapse, the Hawala system has become more pervasive, assuming responsibilities previously fulfilled by the bureaucracy and transferring over 2 billion dollars in and out of the country annually.22 Drawing on Cockayne and Shetret, Stremlau and Osman argue that the entire Somali Remittance Organizations (SRO) business model runs on trust, which “provides security for moving large values over long distances through cooperation with people that an SRO agent may never meet.”23 Coyne’s elaboration on how customers verify their identity by answering questions about their clan lineage illustrates the system’s distinguishing incorporation of relationships.24 That people continue to trade with old Somali shillings, refusing to “accept denominations larger than those that existed in 1991,”25 despite the lack of formal guarantees, is further evidence of the role of trust in promoting a stable business environment.26 

A Weberian analysis of the trust-based system undergirding Somalia’s telecom industry is inconclusive. According to Weber, bureaucracy enables the specialization of “administrative functions according to purely objective considerations.”27 That SROs, as characterized by Stremlau and Osman, “replace the formal system’s expensive bureaucratic safeguards, designed for an open market populated by economic strangers, with a closed network constructed out of the social capital and safeguards provided by family and clan membership,”28 may be understood to undermine Weber’s bureaucratic logic by privileging tradition over calculability.29 But Weber also holds that bureaucratic organization rests on “increasing precision, steadiness, and, above all, speed of operations,”30 and “general rules, which are more or less stable, more or less exhaustive, and which can be learned.”31 Today, the Hawala system operates according to written rules, in an institutionalized and efficient manner. As noted by Mohamed Houssein, “[l]iterally every town is served. No banking service in Somalia in the past has ever achieved this scale of funds transfer and covered such a wide area.”32 If two of bureaucracy’s constituent components are efficiency and durability, there is something to be said about Somalia’s old and new means of moving capital.

Referred to by some as “the world’s most ambitious experiment in mobile banking,”33 the telecom sector’s establishment of M-money illustrates how enterprises can leverage traditional systems to meet the demands of modern society. Broadly defined as “the provision of financial services through a mobile device,”34 mobile banking was developed in the 2000s on “the same trust-based social networks that have supported the Hawala system.”35 Currently used by 70% of Somalia’s population, its popularity is indicative of the population’s desires – and difficulties; in the words of Brian Hesse, “where the country works best also reflects some of what is most wrong.”36 By reducing the need to carry cash, M-money protects people from the risk of being robbed. As explained by a shopkeeper, “Nowadays, I am able to send up to $3000 from my phone to people in other regions without the person next to me knowing. It is good for our safety since we live in very violent times and can lose all our money to militias.”37 At the same time, studies have found that users hesitate to use mobile banking for saving: “I don’t have trust in Zaad [a mobile money service] when it comes to saving money in my account…[W]ho will you sue if something happens to your money? We believe there is nobody.”38 Stremlau and Osman confirm this hesitation, noting that the combination of the electronic system and the weak traditions of documenting commerce has “created a gap that some have attempted to exploit,”39 and “raised a number of social and legal questions, particularly in regard to handling disputes.”40 Rather than an isolated problem, this reflects a broader dilemma of how to handle disagreements without bureaucracy.

Second to the availability of capital, the capacity to settle disputes and enforce rights seems essential to business management. That the society that has emerged in Somalia post-collapse is not “the anarchy and disorder that Hobbes…would predict,” but rather one governed by “alternative forms of localized order and authority,”41 suggests the existence of an alternative justice system, but to what extent has it fulfilled the role of bureaucracy? Dating back to pre-colonial times, Somali customary law, known as Xeer, has played an essential role in society.42 The colonial state and the Somali nation-state tried to replace it with marginal success, and following the collapse, most people have returned to Xeer, which is interpreted and enforced by local clan networks.43 Among other things, Xeer outlaws “homicide, assault, torture, battery, rape, accidental wounding, kidnapping, abduction, robbery, burglary, theft, arson, extortion, fraud, and property damage.”44 According to Stremlau and Osman, it plays an important role in promoting intergroup security, accountability, and reciprocity, as well as in regulating interactions, preventing disputes from escalating into violence, and encouraging investments by demonstrating that “reputable and accessible dispute remedies are available.”4546 With or without bureaucracy, many Somalis appear to behave according to a set of rules, capable of supporting both communities and companies. 

From a Weberian perspective, the fact that each Somali court operates independently, leaving the possibility of contradictory interpretations and lengthy tribunal processes – especially when carried out nationally – precludes the bureaucratic idea of “a ‘rational’ interpretation of law on the basis of strictly formal concepts.”47 In this way, Xeer might illustrate the limitations of nonbureaucratic systems that function on a micro level, but prevent society from achieving complexity on a macro level. Even so, the fact that Xeer law remains in use in Somaliland suggests that there is some perceived benefit to a hybrid approach involving both bureaucratic and traditional legal systems.

Unlike Mogadishu, Somaliland has a formal judicial system and an internal revenue system to support it; of its annual budget, forty percent is dedicated to security.48 The state’s decision to continue to draw on informal justice systems and involve elders and faith leaders in dispute settlements thus appears to be a conscious one.49 According to Sarah Phillips, negligible foreign intervention during Somaliland’s formative period allowed for the emergence of “locally legitimate solutions,”50 that “offer a counterpoint to models offered in the mainstream state building and development literature”51 and see order as “the result of neo-Weberian institutional incentives.”52 In fact, the lack of rational-legal institutions, “appears to have created a logic of action upon which order has rested,”53 Phillips argues. Somaliland’s use of Xeer law in settlements related to M-banking reinforces Stremlau and Osman’s point that the grounding effect of traditional social structures goes hand-in-hand with innovation in the telecom sector.54 Additionally, their explanation of how companies opt for traditional settlements because “institutions such as the police and courts”55 are “seen as corrupt”56 and not always “considered cost-effective,”57 reinforces the point that informal systems can be considered both efficient and objective. Somaliland’s use of Xeer offers a fascinating account of how informal systems may be understood as complements rather than competitors to bureaucratic structures. But as a comparison of the telecom companies based in Somaliland and in Mogadishu reveals, there are limits to what informal systems can do.

Like public bureaucracies, an examination of Somalia’s telecom sector suggests that informal systems are good at coordinating interactions, such as communication, trade, and, to some extent, disputes – when the people involved trust in and operate within the systems. As is the case in every country, with or without bureaucracy, however, there are people in Somalia who operate outside of the system, and this is when the limits of informal systems – as well as public bureaucracies – become apparent. Rules prescribe what people are allowed and not allowed to do in both Mogadishu and Somalia, but when people break against these rules, it is not up to the rules themselves, but to their source – most often the state – to enforce them. This might be possible in Somaliland, but in most of the country, it is not – as illustrated by Hormuud Telecom’s experience in Mogadishu. 

Once considered Mogadishu’s proudest enterprise, Hormuud Telecom’s status as a financier and a victim of the militant organization Al-Shabaab is symptomatic of a society in which bureaucratic logic is sacrificed for security.58 According to Weber, the first principle of efficient economies is that enterprises reinvest all profit and focus solely on continued expansion. Such a narrow focus is only possible in a stable and calculable environment. According to Collins, order and authority in Mogadishu have been predicated on the “symbiotic client-patron relationship between Mogadishu’s warlords and businessmen,”59 and the many criminal groups’ “sustaining of…instability as a means of profiting from it.”60 The city has a police force, but without a state, it is unclear who the force serves; as articulated by Alice Hills, “policing in Somalia is a reflection of the agenda of those in power, which has virtually no constitutionally based stability or norms for order.”61 From imposing a ban on mobile banking to storming Hormuud’s headquarters and occasionally demanding the shutdown of data services, Al-Shabaab undermines the very bureaucratic logic that once might have been identified in Hormuud’s operations. 

In 2010, Hormuud opened its own university, dedicated to training the next generation of Somali engineers, in an expression of how private bureaucracies accumulate not just capital, but also knowledge, information, and infrastructure.62 Al-Shabaab’s capture of the company in the decade since demonstrates how such development almost inevitably catches the interest of others – and the difficulty of preventing such hijacking without the (potential) authority of a state. According to Mr. Abdullahi, a manager in the telecom sector, warlords’ need for mobile services has enabled an equilibrium. Yet, his reiteration that companies “badly need a government”63 and are “very interested in paying taxes,”64 speaks to the limitations of charismatic rule. Somalia’s informal systems might have sufficed to enforce rules locally but faced with an international organization like Al-Shabaab, they fall short – not primarily because of Somalia’s lack of bureaucracy, but because of Somalia’s lack of a state. 

When one begins to understand how the success of Somalia’s telecom industry fits into a larger history – characterized by a continuity that in ways contradicts the country’s popular perception – the story becomes even more extraordinary. Indeed, what I have done is merely scratching the surface; while this paper has examined the supply of telecom, the question of demand constitutes an equally important part and underscores the role of Somalia’s diaspora.65 As articulated by Collins, what makes Somalis’ demand for mobile services intriguing is that “both of the explanations for it – transnational migration and the importance of being connected – reveal a cultural and historical continuity in the ways Somalis have dealt with the unpredictable environments they have faced.”66 Anyone looking to extract a formula will be disappointed by the finding that the success of Somalia’s telecom industry is contingent on a set of complex conditions, and that it takes more than state collapse for a sector to flourish. But within a Somali context, this insight holds potential. Rather than understanding existing social structures as incompatible with the pursuit of stability, actors should consider “possibilities for state (re)building in Somalia that leverage the strengths of Somali society and the ethno-national logic of connections so evident in telecoms case.”67 By understanding the story of the telecom sector as a grander story of a people’s resourcefulness and the proven ability of traditions, the question of national integration may be asked with an appreciation for everything Somalia is and the importance of working with, rather than against everything it has. 

References

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Woman holding Somali flag; photograph by AMISOM Public Information | Image sourced from Flickr | CC License, no changes made

  1. Ken Menkhaus, ‘Governance without Government in Somalia: Spoilers, State Building, and the Politics of Coping’, International Security [online journal], 31/3 (2006/2007), page 74, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4137508, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  2. Raj M. Desai, ‘Somalia’s path to stability’, Brookings [website], (2 Oct. 2019 ), https://www.brookings.edu/articles/somalias-path-to-stability/, accessed 24 Oct. 2024. ↩︎
  3. Yumi Kim, ‘Stateless in Somalia, and Loving it, Mises Institute [website], (21 Feb. 2006), https://mises.org/library/stateless-somalia-and-loving-it, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  4. Ibid ↩︎
  5. Max Weber, The theory of social and economic organization, ed., tr. Alexander Morell Henderson and Talcott Parsons (Mansfield: Martino Publishing, 2023), page 968. ↩︎
  6. Ibid. 988. ↩︎
  7. Ibid. 973. ↩︎
  8. Ibid. 988. ↩︎
  9. Ibid. ↩︎
  10. Benjamin Powell, Ryan Ford, and Alex Nowrasteh, ‘Somalia after state collapse: Chaos or improvement?’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization [online journal], 67/3-4 (2008), page 668, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2008.04.008, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  11. Robert L. Feldman, ‘Amidst the chaos a small force for stability: Somalia’s business community’, Small Wars & Insurgencies [online journal], 23/2 (2012), page 300, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2012.642201, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  12. Benjamin Powell, Ryan Ford, and Alex Nowrasteh, ‘Somalia after state collapse: Chaos or improvement?’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization [online journal], 67/3-4 (2008), page 668, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2008.04.008, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  13. ‘Somalia calling’, Economist, ‘Business’, 20 Dec. 2005, para. 1, https://www.economist.com/business/2005/12/20/somalia-calling, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  14. Reaping the Whirlwind: Hormuud Entrepreneurs and the Resurgence of Al-Shabaab (Nairobi: International Policy Group, 2019), page 25. ↩︎
  15. Ibid. 12. ↩︎
  16. Peter T. Leeson, ‘Better off stateless: Somalia before and after government collapse’, Journal of Comparative Economics [online journal], 35/4 (2007), page 2029, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2007.10.001, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  17. Jamil A. Mubarak, ‘The ‘hidden hand’ behind the resilience of the stateless economy of Somalia’, World Development [online journal], 25/12 (1997), page 2028, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(97)00104-6, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  18. Benjamin Powell, Ryan Ford, and Alex Nowrasteh, ‘Somalia after state collapse: Chaos or improvement?’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization [online journal], 67/3-4 (2008), page 633, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2008.04.008, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  19. Robert Snow and Tahlil Abdi Afrah, Improving access to health care services for pastoral nomads in Somalia (2021), https://www.gu.se/en/research/improving-access-to-health-care-services-for-pastoral-nomads-in-somalia, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  20. Gregory Allen Collins, ‘Commected: Developing Somalia’s telecoms industry in the wake of state collapse’, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing [online journal], (2009), page 6, https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/connected-developing-somalias-telecoms-industry/docview/304839440/se-2, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  21. Yumi Kim, ‘Stateless in Somalia, and Loving it, Mises Institute [website], (21 Feb. 2006), https://mises.org/library/stateless-somalia-and-loving-it, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ; Michael van Notten, The Law of the Somalis: A Stable Foundation for Economic Development in the Horn of Africa, ed., Spencer Heath MacCallum (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2005), 15. ↩︎
  22. Sonia Plaza, ‘Anti-Money Laundering Regulations: Can Somalia survive without remittances?’, World Bank Blogs [website], (11 Feb. 2014 ), https://blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove/anti-money-laundering-regulations-can-somalia-survive-without-remittances, accessed 24 Oct. 2024. ↩︎
  23. Nicole Stremlau and Ridwan Osman, ‘Courts, Clans and Companies: Mobile Money and Dispute Resolution in Somaliland’, International Journal of Security & Development [online journal], 4/1 (2015), page 5, https://doi.org/10.5334/sta.gh, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  24. Christopher J. Coyne, ‘Reconstructing Weak and Failed States: Foreign Intervention and the Nirvana Fallacy, Foreign Policy Analysis [online journal], 2/4 (2006), http://www.jstor.org/stable/24907256, accessed 24 Oct. 2024. ↩︎
  25. Benjamin Powell, Ryan Ford, and Alex Nowrasteh, ‘Somalia after state collapse: Chaos or improvement?’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization [online journal], 67/3-4 (2008), page 668, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2008.04.008, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  26. Ibid. ↩︎
  27. Max Weber, The theory of social and economic organization, ed., tr. Alexander Morell Henderson and Talcott Parsons (Mansfield: Martino Publishing, 2023), page 975. ↩︎
  28. Nicole Stremlau and Ridwan Osman, ‘Courts, Clans and Companies: Mobile Money and Dispute Resolution in Somaliland’, International Journal of Security & Development [online journal], 4/1 (2015), page 5, https://doi.org/10.5334/sta.gh, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  29. Max Weber, The theory of social and economic organization, ed., tr. Alexander Morell Henderson and Talcott Parsons (Mansfield: Martino Publishing, 2023), page 975. ↩︎
  30. Ibid. 974. ↩︎
  31. Ibid. 958. ↩︎
  32. Mohamed Djirdeh Houssein, ‘Somalia: The Experience of Hawala Receiving Countries’, in Regulatory Frameworks for Hawala and Other Remittance Systems (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2005). ↩︎
  33. Nicole Stremlau and Ridwan Osman, ‘Courts, Clans and Companies: Mobile Money and Dispute Resolution in Somaliland’, International Journal of Security & Development [online journal], 4/1 (2015), page 2, https://doi.org/10.5334/sta.gh, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  34. Osman Sayid, Enchabi Abdelghani, and Abdul Aziz, ‘Investigating Mobile Money Acceptance in Somalia’, Pakistan Journal of Commerce and Social Sciences [online journal], 6/2 (2012), page 271, http://www.jespk.net/publications/90.pdf, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  35. Nicole Stremlau and Ridwan Osman, ‘Courts, Clans and Companies: Mobile Money and Dispute Resolution in Somaliland’, International Journal of Security & Development [online journal], 4/1 (2015), page 5, https://doi.org/10.5334/sta.gh, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  36. Brian J. Hesse, ‘Where Somalia works’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies [online journal], 28/3 (2010), page 1, https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2010.499234, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ; ‘Somalia Economic Update: Rapid Growth in Mobile Money’, World Bank [website], (13 Sep. 2018 ), https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/09/13/somalia-economic-update-rapid-growth-in-mobile-money, accessed 24 Oct. 2024. ↩︎
  37. Brian J. Hesse, ‘Where Somalia works’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies [online journal], 28/3 (2010), page 45, https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2010.499234, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  38. Nicole Stremlau and Ridwan Osman, ‘Courts, Clans and Companies: Mobile Money and Dispute Resolution in Somaliland’, International Journal of Security & Development [online journal], 4/1 (2015), page 6, https://doi.org/10.5334/sta.gh, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  39. Ibid. 7. ↩︎
  40. Ibid. 2. ↩︎
  41. Gregory Allen Collins, ‘Commected: Developing Somalia’s telecoms industry in the wake of state collapse’, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing [online journal], (2009), page 12, https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/connected-developing-somalias-telecoms-industry/docview/304839440/se-2, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  42. Benjamin Powell, Ryan Ford, and Alex Nowrasteh, ‘Somalia after state collapse: Chaos or improvement?’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization [online journal], 67/3-4 (2008), page 666, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2008.04.008, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  43. Benjamin Powell, Ryan Ford, and Alex Nowrasteh, ‘Somalia after state collapse: Chaos or improvement?’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization [online journal], 67/3-4 (2008), page 666, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2008.04.008, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  44. ‘The Xeer Traditional Legal System of Somalia’, UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage [website], (2023), https://ich.unesco.org/en/individual-case-study-00988&id=00032, accessed 24 Oct. 2024. / Benjamin Powell, Ryan Ford, and Alex ↩︎
  45. Nicole Stremlau and Ridwan Osman, ‘Courts, Clans and Companies: Mobile Money and Dispute Resolution in Somaliland’, International Journal of Security & Development [online journal], 4/1 (2015), page 5, https://doi.org/10.5334/sta.gh, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  46. Ibid. 4. ↩︎
  47. Max Weber, The theory of social and economic organization, ed., tr. Alexander Morell Henderson and Talcott Parsons (Mansfield: Martino Publishing, 2023), page 976. ; Michael van Notten, The Law of the Somalis: A Stable Foundation for Economic Development in the Horn of Africa, ed., Spencer Heath MacCallum (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2005), page 36. / Benjamin Powell, Ryan Ford, and Alex Nowrasteh, ‘Somalia after state collapse: Chaos or improvement?’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization [online journal], 67/3-4 (2008), page 667, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2008.04.008, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  48. Benjamin Powell, Ryan Ford, and Alex Nowrasteh, ‘Somalia after state collapse: Chaos or improvement?’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization [online journal], 67/3-4 (2008), page 665, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2008.04.008, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  49. Nicole Stremlau and Ridwan Osman, ‘Courts, Clans and Companies: Mobile Money and Dispute Resolution in Somaliland’, International Journal of Security & Development [online journal], 4/1 (2015), page 7, https://doi.org/10.5334/sta.gh, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  50. Sarah G. Phillips, ‘When less was more: external assistance and the political settlement in Somaliland’, International Affairs [online journal], 92/3 (2016), page 644, https://www-jstor-org.yale.idm.oclc.org/stable/24757628?seq=17, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  51. Ibid. 640. ↩︎
  52. Ibid.  ↩︎
  53. Ibid. ↩︎
  54. Nicole Stremlau and Ridwan Osman, ‘Courts, Clans and Companies: Mobile Money and Dispute Resolution in Somaliland’, International Journal of Security & Development [online journal], 4/1 (2015), page 13, https://doi.org/10.5334/sta.gh, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  55. Ibid. ↩︎
  56. Ibid. ↩︎
  57.  Ibid. 17. ↩︎
  58. Reaping the Whirlwind: Hormuud Entrepreneurs and the Resurgence of Al-Shabaab (Nairobi: International Policy Group, 2019), page 44. ↩︎
  59. Gregory Allen Collins, ‘Commected: Developing Somalia’s telecoms industry in the wake of state collapse’, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing [online journal], (2009), page 13, https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/connected-developing-somalias-telecoms-industry/docview/304839440/se-2, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  60. Ibid. 12. ↩︎
  61. Alice Hills, ‘What Is Policeness? On Being Police in Somalia’, British Journal of Criminology [online journal], 54/5 (2014), page, https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/what-policeness-being-police-somalia, accessed 24 Oct. 2024. ↩︎
  62. ‘Our history’, Hormuud University [website], (2022), https://hu.edu.so/vision-mission/our-history/, accessed 24 Oct. 2024. ↩︎
  63. Joseph Winter, ‘Telecoms thriving in lawless Somalia’, BBC News, 19 Nov. 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4020259.stm, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  64. Ibid. ↩︎
  65. Gregory Allen Collins, ‘Commected: Developing Somalia’s telecoms industry in the wake of state collapse’, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing [online journal], (2009), page 24, https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/connected-developing-somalias-telecoms-industry/docview/304839440/se-2, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  66. Gregory Allen Collins, ‘Connected: Exploring the Extraordinary Demand for Telecoms Services in Post-collapse Somalia’, Mobilities [online journal], 4/2 (2009), page 204, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17450100902905139, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎
  67. Gregory Allen Collins, ‘Commected: Developing Somalia’s telecoms industry in the wake of state collapse’, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing [online journal], (2009), page 7, https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/connected-developing-somalias-telecoms-industry/docview/304839440/se-2, accessed 24 Oct. 2023. ↩︎

Author
, , , ,