Issue No. 771

Selling the City: Mogadishu's Land Clearances

Last November, several police officers and a bulldozer arrived in the Moalim Nur neighbourhood of Mogadishu to demolish houses on public land. They likely did not anticipate the welcome they received, with clashes erupting as federal soldiers resisted the land-clearance operation. When the shooting stopped, 5 people had been killed, the bulldozer destroyed, and the soldiers arrested. It was a particularly violent episode amid the federal government's quiet campaign to auction off public land in Mogadishu, which has picked up amidst the political turmoil of the past year.

In early January 2025, the three most prominent national opposition figures– former Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, MP Adirahman Abdishakur, and former PM Hassan Ali Khaire– released a statement criticising the clearances of those living on public land. Schools, abandoned government buildings, a former military camp, and other sites have been demolished, displacing thousands of impoverished people, most from less dominant clans. To date, the most controversial demolition was that of the historic School Polizia cemetery in June 2024, nominally to make way for a naval base with Turkish support. The disturbing of bodies caused an outcry and was condemned by several Islamic scholars, though defended by allied government clerics such as Sheikh Ali Wajis, a known Al-I'tisaam leader.

The three opposition leaders have accused the federal government of corruptly selling off public land to the Somali president's political allies as a means to enrich Villa Somalia. The veracity of these specific claims may be hard to prove, but both Hassan Sheikh administrations have undoubtedly had a reputation for nepotism and graft. Reports suggest that several agreements with Turkish businesses in the past year have involved kickbacks and favours for federal allies. The statement also asserted that the clearances disregard laws intended to protect public lands, including Articles 26 and 43 of the Provisional Constitution, which necessitates the federal government develop a policy for public assets, and the Public Financial Management Act (2019).

Although the current federal administration did not instigate the displacement of vulnerable communities in Mogadishu, the recent clearances are part of this broader ongoing issue. Decades of instability in Mogadishu, and particularly historic internecine fighting, have left complex settlement patterns in the capital, with hundreds of thousands of displaced urban poor crammed into makeshift camps on the edges of the city. Many thousands of homes were also abandoned in the 1990s and 2000s, and alongside the destruction of official records, there remain major issues of squatting on private as well as public land. The most disenfranchised have been taken repeat advantage of by the more dominant clans in Mogadishu, often being used as bait for international assistance in these permanent displacement camps. Within the capital's centre, the collapse of the state also left a large number of government properties vacant and derelict.

Today, Mogadishu is experiencing a property boom that has raised the value of this public land as new hotels and high-rises continue to be slung up, even with Al-Shabaab knocking on the capital's door. The 'Mogadishu Rising' narrative, the assertion that Somalia has decisively turned a corner after years of chaos, is intimately tied to this booming development. But, once again, it is not the majority of Somalis that benefit from the cheap selling-off of public land, but rather 'big men' allied with the government taking ready advantage.

The recent clearances also raise the question of who owns the public land. Clearly, oversight lies with the federal government, but in the transitional political context of Somalia, the auctioning of land not for the public good or coffers but for private enrichment is egregious. This is land that could be better used for many purposes, and the clearing of communities, if it must happen, should be done with far greater sensitivity. Simply selling off land, likely for less than its true worth, for another hotel to be built does little for the many issues facing the capital's citizens.

The spate of recent land clearances also raises concerns about the role of the private sector in Somalia's political economy. There remains an attitude amongst some in the state-building business that Somalia's recovery could be better left to the private sector. This view arises from the private sector's significant role in filling the state's vacuum, particularly in areas like telecommunications, education, and healthcare. Elements of enterprise have also absolutely been central to the country's economic development since the 1990s– a radically different model to the 'developmental state' of neighbouring Ethiopia across the same period. And particularly notable has been how some businesses have positively tied Somalia's patchwork of clans and communities together, working hand-in-hand with development and reconciliation. 

But, of course, it is impossible to disaggregate the country's politics from its economic nature– as the two are entirely intertwined. Much of Somalia's leading businesses and individuals are far from 'apolitical,' as, after 30 years of rolling crises, they have established vested interests in the various political actors and trajectories of the country. Many of the best-known and lauded Somali businesses have benefited from specific relationships with senior government officials. Meanwhile, for instance, the private schools across the country are often tied to transnational Islamist movements from the Gulf, and have helped replace the particular strain of moderate Somali Islam with a much more conservative one. And, as evidenced by the recent land clearances, many businesses' first principles relate to profit-- no matter if hundreds are displaced or the land is bought illegally.

One of the questions thus becomes how best to disincentive the political-economic structures that help to drive corrupt land clearances. It is far from straightforward as it cuts across several issues, not least the engrained corruption of successive federal administrations. Calling attention to the demolitions must be one part of it, but many have been lately distracted by the tensions in Jubaland and the Ethiopian participation in the new African Union peacekeeping mission. Exposing and prosecuting those engaging in the underhand clearances, and not all are aware of the illegality, could be another, but that would rely on Somalia's nascent and malleable judicial system. In many ways, though, the transparent and genuine settlement of these historic disputes on both private and public land in Mogadishu is central to the country moving forward.

The Somali Wire Team