An Exciting New Business Just Opened in Mogdishu

[Idilinaa]

exactly . For us to build a serious industrial base will take decades. But there are things we could do speed this up. One of the things I think that would be intresting for a future administration to do over the next decade is to create some special initiatives or programs that work with Somali owned foreign companies in other parts of the world that do stuff like manufacturing or construction or engineering. give them a tax break or some other perks to setup branches in somalia and maybe even move their headquarters here . I could easily see once we have something like this setup it would help skilled diaspora engineers or other similar types of professionals quickly contribute by being hired as employees of these companies.

Right now Somalia is at Initial Industrialization and Basic Manufacturing stage this will take around 5-10 years. Like agricultural processing, textiles and garments and basic consumer goods manufacturing(soaps, bottled water, construction materials, boats, aliminium, plastic pipes, wires, glass, cement, stone processing, furniture etc etc)

I like how Somalia is approaching this with small to medium sized localized factories spread across. This decentralized and localized approach makes production: Cheaper to set up, Faster to deploy, More resilient to disruption etc

This is bottom up industrialization and laying scalable foundation. It shows Somalia is developing from the ground up, not waiting for massive foreign investment or mega projects.

Establishing intermediate and advanced manufacturing will probably take 15 at minimum or 30 years realistically speaking. . It would require: Large-scale infrastructure (ports, logistics hubs, rail, energy grid upgrades), Skilled labor force, Technology transfer and investment, Industrial clusters or special economic zones.

We're already beginning to see the early signs of this shift, and also starting to see Somalia entering intermediate manufacturing through projects like the steel mill in Mogadishu (SomSteel) but in totality achieving this transition at a national scale it will take many tens of billions of dollars. Even paving all of 18,970 km remaining roads is estimated to cost $9.5 billion USD

What would be a game changer is oil and mining revenue. It would speed things up as well. It could cut the timeline down by 5–10 years, especially if combined with smart investment, transparency, and regional integration.

Revenue could fund national infrastructure (railways, roads, industrial zones). Resource-based processing industries (e.g., refining, petrochemicals, metal smelting) could be built domestically.