Somalia’s elegant colonial villas were left in ruins by two decades of street fighting among warlords and the seaside capital, Mogadishu, was dubbed the most dangerous city in the world.
However, now new housing estates are being built amid an economic boom as diaspora Somalians return and newly wealthy businesspeople capitalize on the relative peace in the city.
About 7km outside Mogadishu in what was formerly a largely rural area, new homes are springing up, with almost 50 houses now ready on an estate, builders said.
It was a “great honor” to back the estimated US$20 million project, Salaam Somali Bank official Mohamed Abdullahi Ali said.
Construction began early last year and the project was touted as offering commercial returns and helping rebuild the nation.
“It is a new neighborhood for all Somalis to buy affordable homes, by leaving the densely populated neighborhoods of Mogadishu, and to come and stay with families here,” Ali said.
“According to our plan, we are going to build 500 homes that can cover the residential needs for 500 families in the first stage and then will construct more houses,” he said.
Tens of thousands of people forced to flee their homes still live in plastic and rag shelters in the capital — sometimes in the ruins of war-shattered buildings — and more than 1 million people are still in need of emergency aid in a nation ravaged by famine in 2011, the UN said.
Car bombs and assassinations are still common and 22,000 African Union soldier fights alongside the Somalian Army to protect the internationally backed government from attacks by the militant group al-Shabaab.
The streets in the new estate offer a very different vision of Mogadishu.
Those returning to Somalia — including investors wanting to start new businesses in their homeland — said the Daru Salaam estate offers them a more secure place to live.
“I came back to this city to buy a new home in Daru Salaam neighborhood... the houses are well built,” said Abdiqadar Jimale Roble, 34, who grew up in Sweden from the age of 12 after Somalia spiraled into civil war in the early 1990s.
“I have been out of Somalia for long time but I came back because everybody needs his country — and the country is making much progress,” Roble said. “I had to take part in that progress, and everybody should have a house in his country.”
For those returning with dollars earned abroad, the estate reflects the possible profits to be made even in a still dangerous nation.
Sadia Sheikh Ahmed, who also grew up in Sweden after fleeing Somalia, said she had helped her relatives abroad buy property.
“Initially we wanted to buy two houses, but now we and our relatives have bought eight homes, scheduled to be completed soon,” she said.
A two-floor house can cost about US$130,000, while a more simple bungalow is worth about US$70,000.
Those are hefty sums in one of the poorest nation in the world, with a GDP per capita of only US$284, according to the World Bank, against a sub-Saharan Africa average of US$1,300.
Development indicators are “among the lowest in the world,” the World Bank said, adding that the Horn of Africa nation is “heavily dependent” on aid and remittances.
More than 308,000 children are acutely malnourished, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“After more than two decades of violence and political instability, Somalia is on a positive trajectory,” the office said, while warning the “promising trend” takes place amid a “precarious” humanitarian and security situation.
“Humanitarian needs remain vast and Somalia’s humanitarian crisis remains among the largest and most complex in the world,” the office added.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver