Somali oil curse myth

[Midas]

I was reflecting on the fact that in the next 5-10 years somalia will likely start getting oil money it will be small at first but will likely grow rapidly.

I used to think that somalia woukd just suffer from an oil curse and the end result would juat be massive corruption like these other countries. But then I realized that somalia's starting point is actually much higher. When nigeria or Angola or even saudi arabia. Started making money from oil they had like 20% literacy and less than 15% urbanization rate. There was no real education system to speak of in these countries. Somalias starting point is much much higher . We have 50% urbanization rate. Multiple large urban centers. A semi functioning education system. Are literacy rate is like 60%. A small but growing pool of skilled professionals both in the diaspora and back home.

These countries had nothing even remotely close to this. We also don't have the large pouplation of nigeria or the desert geography of saudi arabia. Even if all we do is avoid the worst case scenario the situation will be several times better than what happened to nigeria or angola.

 

[peterpeter]

Thats not the problem though most Somalis are extremely disenfranchised and have no say in politics, whats stopping politicians who don't respect the rule of law to cash the money and put it in an offshore bank. Even though we need to sell the oil I'm not a defeatist this is the problem with African politicians.

 

[Midas]

Thats not the problem though most Somalis are extremely disenfranchised and have no say in politics, whats stopping politicians who don't respect the rule of law to cash the money and put it in an offshore bank. Even though we need to sell the oil I'm not a defeatist this is the problem with African politicians.

Corruption is expected i won't even be surprised if we had a couple big examples like your mentioning. But we have systems and institutions in place that these other countries didn't have at all. They were starting from a 0 and were starting from a 4 .

A lot of the big causes of this corruption
1) One large capital city
2) extremely low literacy rate
3) no infrastructure.

We don't suffer from any of this. These guys basically had little to no college educated professionals when the money started rolling in. Plus when you see oil money corruption it's often one guy or one poltical party ruling for decades . Who's taking the money.

I'm not expecting us to get anything near Norway level growth. Just a couple basically investments in education, heath, and infrastructure whhich already doing combined with some partnerships with foerign companies would be transformative. it only takes an 11% growth rate to go from $1000 gdp per capita to $3000 gdp per capita in 10 years. We were already doing like 4-5% now.

 

[Dalac Bilaash]

Corruption is expected i won't even be surprised if we had a couple big examples like your mentioning. But we have systems and institutions in place that these other countries didn't have at all. They were starting from a 0 and were starting from a 4 .

A lot of the big causes of this corruption
1) One large capital city
2) extremely low literacy rate
3) no infrastructure.

We don't suffer from any of this. These guys basically had little to no college educated professionals when the money started rolling in. Plus when you see oil money corruption it's often one guy or one poltical party ruling for decades . Who's taking the money.

I'm not expecting us to get anything near Norway level growth. Just a couple basically investments in education, heath, and infrastructure whhich already doing combined with some partnerships with foerign companies would be transformative. it only takes an 11% growth rate to go from $1000 gdp per capita to $3000 gdp per capita in 10 years. We were already doing like 4-5% now.

Corruption will vanish if you adopt full scale digitalization of all transactions no one can steal anything because it can easily be tracked if we avoid cash we are good

 

[CABDULWALI XASAN.]

Corruption will vanish if you adopt full scale digitalization of all transactions no one can steal anything because it can easily be tracked if we avoid cash we are good

How would it even help, it would only make things easier. Somalia already relies on digital transactions which is fine, but for things like this? Its in the hands of these monopolies, not decentralized and public like bitcoin theyd be taking a cut and no one would know. Trust me