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Somalia: Cost of Food Prompts Demo in Capital
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UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
5 May 2008
Posted to the web 5 May 2008
Nairobi
Many thousands of Somalis took to the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, on 5 May, shutting down most of the city in a protest against high food prices and traders' refusal to accept old Somali shilling notes, witnesses said.
Government security forces guarding an official building shot dead two protestors, according to several witnesses.
"We are fed up with the way poor people are being treated," Ali Abdi Geesdheer, one of the demonstrators, told IRIN.
Protestors engulfed the city, burning tyres and stoning any businesses that were open, said a local journalist.
"No part of the city was safe today [5 May]," he said.
Another demonstrator, Igale Arale, said: "The only thing we have left is the old 1,000 shilling note and they [traders] have refused it, and only take US dollars. This means we don't get to eat. For us it is a matter of life and death; for them it is just business."
He said the demonstrators had no political agenda.
"We are simple people who are fed up," he said, adding that the protests would continue until "the traders agreed to take the notes or the government comes up with a solution".
The journalist said some demonstrators had attacked a convoy of vehicles coming out of the port and looted its merchandise.
He said although the demonstrations had died down in parts of the city, "there are still some areas where they are continuing."
The protests broke out against a backdrop of hyperinflation and severe drought as well as violence that has prompted over half of Mogadishu's residents to flee the city.
Hyperinflation
The Somali shilling was exchanging at 34,000 to the US dollar in markets across the south, including Mogadishu, on 5 May, an all-time low.
"This time last year, the rate in Mogadishu was 14,500," said a businessman in the city.
Many blame the interim government and counterfeiters for the shilling's fall. There has been no legal printing of Somali currency since the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in the early 1990s. All the local currency in circulation is either printed illegally in the country or imported by individual businessmen.
The problem is exacerbated by the lack of a properly functioning central bank to set monetary policy, according to Somali economist Yahye Sheikh Amir, the dean of economics at Mogadishu University.
As a result, Amir said, the "biggest losers are the very poor, especially the urban poor."
Some Mogadishu traders complain that the situation had been aggravated by the government's insistence that all taxes and fees be paid in dollars.
"The only way this can be resolved is for the government to stop home-printing of currency and start accepting the Somali shilling for services," Amir said.
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"We are at the mercy of unscrupulous traders and an unfeeling government," he said.
He said life in Mogadishu was becoming impossible for ordinary people "and that is what is driving this [demonstration]. If things don't improve it could get a lot worse."
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
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