Somalia SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM, 1970-75
Herd of cattle and flock of goats at watering hole north of
Chisimayu; such animals represent a major Somali export
Courtesy Hiram A. Ruiz
Mahammad Siad Barre legitimated his 1969 coup d'état in terms
of the national economic malaise. On October 20, 1970, the first
anniversary of the coup, he announced:
In our Revolution we believe that we have broken the
chain of a consumer economy based on imports, and we
are free to decide our destiny. And in order to realize
the interests of the Somali people, their achievement
of a better life, the full development of their
potentialities and the fulfillment of their
aspirations, we solemnly declare Somalia to be a
Socialist State.
Relying on Soviet advisers and a committed group of Italianeducated Somali "leftist" intellectuals, Siad Barre announced the
1971-73 Three-Year Plan
(see Siad Barre and Scientific Socialism
, ch. 1). The plan emphasized a higher standard of living for every
Somali, jobs for all who sought work, and the eradication of
capitalist exploitation. Agricultural "crash programs" and
creation of new manufacturing plants were the immediate results.
Siad Barre quickly brought a substantial proportion of the
modern economy under state control. The government nationalized
banks, insurance companies, petroleum distribution firms, and the
sugar-refining plant and created national agencies for
construction materials and foodstuffs. Although the Somali
neologism for socialism, hantiwadaag, could be translated
as the "sharing of livestock," camel herds were not nationalized,
and Siad Barre reassured pastoralists that hantiwadaag
would not affect their animals. To mollify international
business, in 1972 Siad Barre announced a liberal investment code.
Because the modern economy was so small, nationalization was more
showmanship than a radical change in the economy.
The creation of cooperatives soon became a cornerstone in
building a socialist economy. In 1973 the government decreed the
Law on Cooperative Development, with most funds going into the
agricultural sector. In the precoup years, agricultural programs
had received less than 10 percent of total spending. By 1974 the
figure was 29.1 percent. The investment in cooperatives had
limited long-term results, however. In Galole near Hargeysa, for
example, a government team established a cooperative in 1973, and
government funds helped purchase a tractor, a cooperative center,
and a grain storage tank. Members received token salaries as
well. But in July 1977, with the beginning of the Ogaden War,
state involvement in Galole ended; by 1991 the cooperative was no
longer in operation.
Cooperatives also aimed at the nomad, although on a smaller
scale. The 1974-78 Development Plan allocated only 4.2 percent of
the budgeted funds to livestock. Government officials argued that
the scientific management of rangeland--the regeneration of
grazing lands and the drilling of new water holes--would be
possible only under socialist cooperation. In the fourteen
government-established cooperatives, each family received an
exclusive area of 200 to 300 hectares of grazing land; in times
of drought, common land under reserve was to become available.
The government committed itself to providing educational and
health services as well as serving as a marketing outlet for
excess stock. Neither agricultural nor fishing cooperatives,
however, proved economically profitable.
Integrated agricultural development projects were somewhat
more successful than the cooperatives. The Northwest Region
Agricultural Development Project, for example, survived the
1980s. Building upon the bunding (creation of embankments to
control the flow of water) done by the British in the 1950s and
by the United States Agency for International Development (AID)
in the 1960s, the
World Bank (see Glossary) picked up the program
in the 1970s and 1980s. Yields from bunded farms increased
between 2.40 and 13.74 quintals per hectare over the yields from
unbunded farms. However, overall improvement in agricultural
production was hardly noticeable at a macroeconomic level (see
table 2, Appendix).
Somalia's rural-based socialist programs attracted
international development agencies. The Kuwait Fund for Arab
Economic Development (KFAED), AID, and the FAO participated first
in the Northern Rangelands Development Project in 1977 and in the
Central Rangelands Project in 1979. These projects called for
rotating grazing areas, using reserves, and creating new
boreholes, but the drought of 1974 and political events undid
most efforts.
During 1974-75 a drought devastated the pastoral economy.
Major General Husseen Kulmiye headed the National Drought Relief
Committee, which sought relief aid from abroad, among other
programs. By January 1975, China, the United States, the European
Economic Community, the Soviet Union, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland,
Sudan, Algeria, Yugoslavia, Yemen, and others had pledged 66,229
tons of grain, 1,155 tons of milk powder, and tons of other food
products. Later that year, with aid from the Soviet Union, the
government transported about 90,000 nomads from their hamlets to
agricultural and fishing cooperatives in the south. The regime
established new agricultural cooperatives at Dujuuma on the Jubba
River (about 18,000 hectares), Kurtun Waareycnear the Shabelle
River (about 6,000 hectares), and Sablaale northwest of Chisimayu
(about 6,000 hectares). The KFAED and the World Bank supported
irrigation projects in these cooperatives, in which corn, beans,
peanuts, and rice were planted. Because the government provided
seeds, water, management, health facilities, and schools, as well
as workers' salaries, the farms were really state-owned farms
rather than cooperatives. Essentially, they became havens for
women and children because after the drought the men went off
inland with whatever money they had accumulated to buy livestock
to replenish their stock of animals.
The government also established fishing cooperatives. Despite
a long coastline and an estimated potential yield of 150,000 tons
per year of all species of fish, in the early 1970s fishing
accounted for less than 1 percent of Somalia's gross domestic
product
(
GDP--see Glossary). In 1975 cooperatives were
established at Eyl, a post in the Nugaal region; Cadale, a port
1200 kilometers northeast of Mogadishu; and Baraawe. The Soviet
Union supplied modern trawlers; when Soviet personnel left
Somalia in 1978, Australia and Italy supported these fishing
projects. Despite their potential and broad-based international
support, these cooperatives failed to become profitable.
Siad Barre emphasized the great economic successes of the
socialist experiment, a claim that had some truth in the first
five years of the revolution. In this period, the government
reorganized the sole milk-processing plant to make it more
productive; established tomato-canning, wheat flour, pasta,
cigarette, and match factories; opened a plant that manufactured
cardboard boxes and polyethylene bags; and established several
grain mills and a petroleum refinery. In addition, the state put
into operation a meat-processing plant in Chisimayu, as well as a
fish-processing factory in Laas Qoray northeast of Erigavo. The
state worked to expand sugar operations in Giohar and to build a
new sugar-processing facility in Afgooye. In three of the four
leading light industries--canned meats, milk, and textiles--there
were increases in output between 1969 and 1975.
Progress in the early socialist period was not uniform,
however. The government heralded various programs in the
transport, packaging, irrigation, drainage, fertilization, and
spraying of the banana crop. Yet, despite the boom year of 1972,
banana exports declined.
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