Agriculture in Somalia
[1] With the advantage of being located near the Arabian Peninsula, Somali traders have increasingly begun to challenge Australia's traditional dominance over the Gulf Arab livestock and meat market, offering quality animals at very low prices.
After inspection at a newly constructed animal quarantine facility in Mogadishu, 13,000 goats and 2,435 camels were sent to markets in Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
[12][13] The firm exports a little over 90,000 tonnes of hides and skins every year from Bosaso to Ethiopia, Turkey, Pakistan, India, China and Italy.
[14] In 2007, the Burao city authority in collaboration with development organizations and local traders opened the Burco Meat and Produce complex.
Burao along with the nearby town of Yirowe are home to the largest livestock markets, known in Somali as seylad, in the Horn of Africa, with as many as 10,000 heads of sheep and goats sold daily, many of whom shipped to Gulf states via the port of Berbera.
Abdullahi Hussein, the director of the just-formed Trans-National Industrial Electricity and Gas Company, predicted that the investment strategy would create 100,000 jobs.
The second phase of the project, which began in mid-to-late 2011, saw the construction of factories in specially designated economic zones for the farming, livestock, fishing and mining industries.
Under the initiative, the cultivators received training from FAO and WFP experts on grading their grain, post-harvest handling, and warehouse and storage management.
By March of the year, cultivators from south-central Somalia had through the program sold 200 metric tons of high quality maize grain.
[27] In December 2014, the Ministry of Agriculture announced that it would commence a new water management project on the Shabelle River in 2015 in order to assist small scale cultivators.
[31] In 2012, a team of engineers was also enlisted by the Puntland authorities to assess the ongoing renovations taking place at the Las Khorey port.
Constructed in conjunction with the UK authorities and the UNDP, it is part of a larger regional development plan which will see two other similar marketplaces launched within the year in Galkayo and Qardho.
[35] In March 2014, Puntland President Abdiweli Mohamed Ali in conjunction with representatives from the EU and FAO officially launched a new database for registering local fishermen.
[36] Registering fishermen will allow the Puntland government to identify who fishes in its waters, and to ensure efficacious management of fisheries and sustainable resource use through the gathering of vital data.
The talks were brokered by the Scottish Conservative Euro MP Struan Stevenson, with the aim of securing international funding for reconstruction of Somalia's fishing industry infrastructure.
According to Stevenson, the EU's long-term objective is to set up a fisheries partnership agreement with the Somali authorities in order to tap into the country's abundant marine stocks.
The Puntland and Yemeni Fisheries ministries are also scheduled to hold talks on bilateral cooperation, with the aim of preserving and effectively exploiting marine resources.
[39] In October 2014, in an extraordinary meeting in Mogadishu chaired by Second Deputy Speaker Mahad Abdalle Awad, the Federal Parliament passed a new Fishing Act.
