The fundamental cause of Africa's recurring crises and calamities are corrupt elites who transform cultural identities into divisive political wedges between communities.

Somalia had postcolonial Africa's first democratic change of government in 1967 and enacted the first comprehensive civil service reform two years earlier. The late Zambian president, Dr Kenneth Kaunda, visited Somalia in 1968 and declared that "Somali democracy should be a model for other African countries".

This remarkable progressive record did not last very long. A military dictatorship took over the reins of power in 1969. After nearly two decades of autocratic rule, the regime plunged the country into a vicious civil war from which it has yet to recover.

Somalia's early success and the nature of its prolonged catastrophe have powerful political lessons for Africa. A discerning reader would ask: exactly what caused such a radical change of fortune and how can the rest of Africa avoid such a catastrophe?

The rise and fall of Somali democracy

There were two critical historical factors that shaped Somalia's political journey and which it shares with many countries on the continent.

First, the Italian and British colonial regimes that ruled Somali territories turned a native's cultural pedigree (male genealogy) into a political identity (political tribalism) in order to segregate...

Abdi Ismail Samatar is a senator in the Federal Parliament of Somalia, an extraordinary professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pretoria and professor of Geography at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of the recent book, Framing Somalia: Beyond Africa's Merchants of Misery (Red Sea Press, 2022).