Issue No. 775

Abu Yasir, Livestock, and Monopolies in Somalia

At the beginning of January, reports emerged that Villa Somalia had granted a foreign businessman named Abu Yasir exclusive rights over Somalia's livestock exports. For an alleged USD 3 million bonus and a levy of USD 4 per head of livestock, it was agreed that the country's primary export would be handed over to a single individual. All ports from Bosasso to Hobyo to Mogadishu to Kismaayo, as well as Berbera in Somaliland and many others, would have to submit to the undisclosed terms established by a federal government hostile to administrations in Puntland, Jubaland and Somaliland. With an estimated over 30 million goats, 13 million sheep, 7 million camels, and 5 million cattle, the potential for massively destabilising socio-economic reverberations across the country is immense.

Mohammed Qaid Saeed, better known as Abu Yasir, is a Yemeni-born Saudi businessman with considerable assets in the agricultural and livestock industries across the Horn and Gulf, particularly in Djibouti and Saudi Arabia. Over several years, the businessman established a reputation for underhand monopolistic practices, particularly in Djibouti, having invested tens of USD millions into a livestock and quarantine facility there in the mid-2000s. He has also owned shoe manufacturers in Italy and meat retailers in Saudi Arabia, operating an enormous supply chain that stretches across multiple continents.

Similar to the current case in Somalia, without warning in December 2005, Djibouti's President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh decreed that USAID would no longer have oversight over the quarantine facility and that it would be handed over to Yasir's company– which operated 60 slaughterhouses in Saudi Arabia at the time. Years later, a 2013 USAID report revealed that all animals entering Djibouti still had to transit through his facility's quarantine and vaccination process. Yasir has maintained a close relationship with the Guelleh government since and is believed to have been involved in influencing the Saba Bank of Yemen to open a branch in Djibouti in 2006. On Tuesday, amid the furore in Somalia, ties between Abu Yasir's company and the Djiboutian government deepened further. Chairman of the Djibouti Ports & Free Zones Authority and the Great Horn Investment Holding signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Abu Yasir that the Djibouti Ship Repair Yard will now service his company's fleet of livestock carriers. The ambitions of Yasir to establish a livestock monopoly in the Horn for export to the Gulf are clear to see.  

Meanwhile, when the story of the livestock monopoly broke, parliamentarians in Somalia reacted strongly. On 6 January, nearly 100 members from both chambers of the federal parliament signed a statement condemning the agreement between Yasir and the federal government, warning that it threatens to upend the livestock trade. Gedo MP Mursal Khalif succinctly argued that "livestock is the backbone of our economy, and this decision is jeopardising the livelihoods of countless people." It is hard to overstate the importance of the industry, which contributed a whopping estimated USD 1.07bn to Somalia's economy in 2023 and is the livelihood for over 60% of the population. Last week, a number of clan elders and livestock sector representatives also met in Beledweyne to discuss the crisis, emphasising how any monopolisation impacts not just herders and pastoralists but others as well, including truck drivers and brokers. 

The attempts by Mogadishu to dominate livestock exports are extending to Somaliland as well, which also depends on the industry as a major economic pillar. The newly appointed Somaliland Minister of Livestock, Omar Shu'ayb Mohamed, has slammed Mogadishu for diverting tax revenue and asserted the attempt at monopolisation is an attack on the polity's economy and autonomy. He further declared a four-day suspension of livestock exports in protest from Berbera in early January, with traders also reporting 80,000 livestock stuck at the port.

This is not the first time Abu Yasir has been implicated in an apparent effort to undermine Somaliland's livestock industry. In 2010, Yasir was accused of planting a story in the al-Riyadh newspaper that asserted the decision by Saudi Arabia to lift the ban on Somali livestock the previous year was hasty and made without verifying animal health inspection quality in Berbera in Somaliland and Bosasso in Puntland. The allegedly planted story followed Abu Yasir's earlier failure to break into the livestock monopoly in Somaliland in the mid-2000s – at that time dominated by Saudi businessman Suleiman Al-Jabir, who had agreed with Hargeisa a fixed price of just USD 38 per sheep/ goat through two Somali brokers. Though the Dahir Riyale Kahin government initially denied Yasir, after the controversial and unpopular monopoly ended in 2009, he established quarantine facilities in both Berbera and Bosasso. Today, some have speculated that it is not simply financial motivation behind the attempts at monopolisation but is also being driven by Mogadishu and Djibouti to undermine Somaliland's industry.

In Mogadishu, the preferring of Yasir in Somalia appears connected to his relationship with two controversial allies of the Somali president-- MP Sadaq Omar Hassan  'John' and US-sanctioned Abdinasir Ali Adoon. John, a former Banaadir police chief, was implicated in the debacle surrounding the smuggling of two ambushed truckloads of weapons in July 2024. He also happens to be Guelleh's son-in-law. Adoon, meanwhile, is a prominent Hawiye/ Abgaal businessman also linked to Somalia's arms trade and sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in June 2021 for his financial ties to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. In a published photo of a recent meeting between Abu Yasir and the Livestock Ministry, Adoon is present in the room, and has been a conduit of funds between several federal projects and alleged kickbacks-- including relating to Turkiye's oil exploration deal with Mogadishu last year.

Somalia's federal government may insist that it exercises de jure control over national resources, but it is predominantly the Federal Member States and Somaliland that exercise de facto power. The federal government's tax collection is nearly entirely restricted to the capital, as evidenced by the paltry roll-out of the 5% tax on digital transactions in July 2024. Still, despite resistance from the devolved administrations, as well as Hargeisa, Somalia's federal government collects sovereign rents, or attempts to, on overflight fees, oil exploration license bonuses, and fishing licenses-- and refuses to distribute the funds equitably. In trade, the federal government has established monopolistic practices in several major industries, including the import of khat, the mild hallucinogenic leaf, from Kenya. These policies, amid Somalia's persistent harsh economic climate, are generating increasing anger towards the government. Just yesterday, female khat sellers in Mogadishu blocked the KM4 road to Aden Adde to protest increased taxes. 

Amidst its political fallout with the Puntland and Jubaland administrations, Villa Somalia has further sought to weaponise development funds from international partners. It is unsurprising that though Somalia may have completed the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative in late 2023, agreeing upon and codifying 'fiscal federalism' remains as distant as ever. The purported attempts to monopolise the livestock industry are just the latest in a string of attempts by Mogadishu to cash in on its juridical recognition.

The political economy of Somalia, and across much of the Horn, can almost be encapsulated in this episode. The controversy involves a whole coterie of dubious individuals working not in the national interest but to line their own pockets no matter the impact on climate-impacted herders and pastoralists. Some details are contested and are yet unknown; with Somalia's parliament in recess, the ability to question ministers is suspended, and the livestock ministry has yet to refute the reports. Once again, though, Villa Somalia is wielding its diaphanous sovereignty not to uplift the Somali people but as a cudgel against them.

The Somali Wire Team