Mogadishu — 'In Mogadishu, new development is welcome - but all we ask is to be included.'
A construction boom is transforming the Mogadishu skyline. But as investors pump money into new apartment buildings and shopping centres, they're also widening inequality in a city where hundreds of thousands of displaced victims of war and drought struggle to survive.
The boom follows decades of development stagnation after clan-based violence wrecked the coastal city in the 1990s. A series of weak and donor-dependent governments have since struggled to impose their authority, challenged by a jihadist insurgency entrenched in the countryside.
The flow of desperate rural families heading to Mogadishu to escape insecurity and climate shocks has given Somalia one of the fastest urbanisation rates in the world. An estimated 700,000 displaced people have settled in recent years in the city's overcrowded and neglected informal settlements.
Yet a creeping gentrification is also underway as wealthy business elites - including returning diaspora Somalis - take advantage of the slowly improving security in Mogadishu to invest.
The new construction is a vote of confidence in the country's future, despite the bomb attacks by the jihadist group al-Shabab targeting the popular beaches and restaurants where people gather.
Winners and losers
But the urbanisation free-for-all has a social cost, discriminating as it does against those living on the margins of society - the displaced and the urban poor. They lack documentation and legal protections, and, as land values increase, there has been a related rise in forced evictions in a city where those with money and clan backing can act with impunity.
Yasmin Omar, a single mother originally from Lower Shabelle in southern Somalia, has been evicted four times since she fled to Mogadishu with her children following the killing of her husband by al-Shabab in 2021.
"We are being pushed from one location to another," she told The New Humanitarian. "In the last incident, a bulldozer came at night to forcibly evict us, and there was no one to help us."
Between January and July this year, close to 40,000 people - 75% of them women - were evicted in Mogadishu, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, which maps expulsions.
Most evictions are by private landlords, or the result of land grabbing by politicians and the well-connected. But displaced households that have settled in abandoned government buildings are also being cleared to make way for property development.
Earlier this year, the local authorities requested families to exhume the bodies of relatives buried on government land near the port that had been earmarked for a navy camp, amid allegations that the plot was being sold to a wealthy business owner.
Yasmin Omar, a single mother originally from Lower Shabelle in southern Somalia
Mubarik Ahmed, country manager of the Regional Durable Solutions Secretariat (ReDSS) - a coalition of NGOs working on displacement issues - argues that one of the biggest challenges is that much of the land in Mogadishu is in private hands, and ownership records are patchy.
The absence of comprehensive urban planning and robust legal systems creates opportunities for the exploitation of vulnerable communities. These are typically people who have arrived in Mogadishu from the countryside, and who do not have the right clan-based protection networks that are so influential in the city.
Omar said each time she and her four children have been forced to move, it has magnified their hardships. "The people with money are making the city expensive for the rest of us," she explained. "No one from the local authorities comes to listen to us."
Yet gentrification has also revitalised districts like Hodan in the northwest, and Hamar Wayne at the opposite end of the city. In a bustling Hodan, close to the international airport, rentals in one of the new apartment buildings range from $600 to $1,500 a month - well beyond the reach of city residents like Omar, who earns less than a dollar a day.
Ahmed Liban is one of the new class of property developers. Originally living in Canada, he returned to Somalia in 2019 and is building a new high-rise apartment in the Hodan district.
Most of the workers on his construction site are new arrivals to Mogadishu, and earn $10 a day - a decent wage here. "So it is possible for urban economic growth to reach people, but we need better and stronger governance that can oversee the trickle down of economic growth for all," he told The New Humanitarian.
'That day, my voice came out'
The employment opportunities the new investors like Liban create are appreciated. "My daughter and son have the potential to find jobs in these emerging hotels, restaurants, and shopping malls," acknowledged Aisha Mohamed, who sells cosmetics on the streets.
But she argues that what is also needed is more inclusive growth - that doesn't disempower the urban poor, including informal traders like herself. "Every city goes through changes," she said. "And in Mogadishu, new development is welcomed - but all we ask is to be included."
To make that point, she and a group of women street traders refused to be moved along from outside one of the city's shopping malls during Ramadan earlier this year - commercially the busiest time of year.
"That day, my voice came out," said Mohamed. "We protested, and even local representatives from the mayor intervened and instructed the police to let us continue our business."
Before the chaos of the 1990s, urban development used to be state controlled. The then-centralised planning model included investment in public housing, infrastructure projects, and the creation of economic zones.
As the federal government tries to rebuild its authority, its efforts are hamstrung by the extent of the country's humanitarian crisis. The repeated climate shocks, and the resilience of al-Shabab, has left one in five Somalis acutely food insecure.
To tackle the cycles of protracted displacement - which reinforces people's poverty and dependency - the government has launched a National Durable Solution Strategy that aims to provide services and economic opportunities to displaced communities.
But creating the conditions for displaced people to live in safety and dignity requires substantial funding from international donors - and they have already cut life-saving humanitarian aid by 37% this year.
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Ahmed of ReDSS argues that to better integrate displaced communities, Somalia needs to "move away from the emergency lens approach and start prioritising development interventions".
The World Bank and the African Development Bank have scaled up their support in recent years, ranging from infrastructure projects to livelihood programmes and social services provision.
But there can be no quick fix for a country facing such severe interconnected emergencies, and where government authority remains so fragile, acknowledged Ahmed.
A key step would be to address the thorny issue of land ownership, he noted. Many informal settlements are on land without any formal title, and the lack of clear land tenure laws has contributed to a legacy of historical disputes, competing claims, and forced evictions.
Powerful individuals - from clan elders to municipal officials, business people, and landowners - have considerable influence. However, there is some evidence that written lease agreements, recently introduced by the regional government between landowners and displaced communities, have slowed the rate of expulsions.
To re-think urban development in Mogadishu - for it to be more inclusive, giving the poor and vulnerable a greater voice - requires some imagination. But Mohamed believes that she, and other ordinary residents, have earned a seat at the table.
"I have witnessed and lived through the civil war, but have remained resilient and determined to make a living," she explained. "So we have every right to be part of Mogadishu's new urban development."
Edited by Obi Anyadike.
