Somalia’s ‘Constructive Elite’ and the Challenges Ahead

Laura Mann reports from the first event of the Rift Valley Institute’s Nairobi Forum for Research, Policy and Local Knowledge – ‘A Somali Spring?’ A link to the podcast can be found at the end of the post.

On October 11^th, the Rift Valley held its first ‘Nairobi Forum’. They invited Ken Menkhaus, Amal Ismail, Jabril Abdulla and Matt Bryden to discuss the post-election climate in Somalia. The former Kenyan ambassador to Somalia, Mohamed Abdi Affey, who was chairing the proceedings, joked: “We wanted to show Kenya what it means to be a democratic nation”.

All parties agreed that Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is a man who combines two clean hands with enormous street cred. There is reason for ‘cautious optimism’ even amidst the challenges ahead. Ken Menkhaus argued that it was not the election of this single remarkable man that was important, but the extensive support network behind him. Describing this network as a ‘constructive elite,’ Menkhaus clarified that this was not a mass uprising ‘Somali Spring’ but a civic mobilization of determined professionals tired of warlordism and ineffective foreign interventions alike. These individuals have been on the ground for the past 20 years, building hospitals, schools, universities and private businesses. They have spent the past 20 years “navigating the streets” as Ken Menkhaus put it. They have learnt how to negotiate deals with difficult parties, how to build trust across clans and most importantly, they know how to get things done. Jabril Abdulla added that these negotiating skills are important. The gradual expansion of the state will not just involve institutions, but people, some benign and some less palatable. Getting warlords to engage in politics is one of the key challenges.

Abdulla added that while elites had gotten him elected, there was nonetheless widespread public support behind his victory. He described how the public ‘legitimized’ the election by broadcasting the news on radios and televisions during the week following the election. However he also cautioned that there were some regions that did not share in the jubilation.

Nevertheless, as each of them said in turn, there is reason for cautious optimism.

Seeking inclusivity in Ethiopian healthcare

By Julianne Weis

In a guest lecture last week at Oxford, Harvard historian Emmanuel Akyeampong began with a methodological caveat, stating that he was not interested in the tradition and modernity dichotomy, but rather saw the two terms as existing in a constant interchange of causation and process. His argument made me think of Jake McKnight’s post regarding those excluded from modernity politics in Ethiopia. Blankedly disregarding “tradition” in pursuit of “modernity,” rather than investigating the constant interchanges between the two terms, leads to an elitist form of development.

It was this dichotomous thinking that formed the basis of failed development politics in Ethiopia under previous regimes – Haile Selassie most notably – and only served to alienate the majority populace. Ethiopia today continues to contend with this exclusionist legacy – particularly when providing services like education and health. In developing a modern health network for Ethiopia, Haile Selassie truly saw himself as starting from zero – any indigenous system or network was conveniently wiped aside as the Imperial regime attempted to inject a fully modern mode of healthcare. In 1944, a British nurse working in Ethiopia called the country a “doctor’s paradise… if to provide a pretty clean slate on which to work is a paradise then it may be agreed that Ethiopia is one.” What is implied in this type of rhetoric is that because Western medical systems were so underdeveloped, Ethiopians had no existent networks of health and healing – the population was merely succumbing to illness and death without making any effort to develop curative or palliative services for themselves. Under this line of thinking, the Selassie regime strove to develop what they termed the first public health network for the empire, training hundreds of community nurses and health officers to man village health centres throughout the countryside – over 400 built before 1965.

Unfortunately these health officers and nurses were notoriously ineffective, owing largely to the elitist core of their operations. The centres’ staff were trained to believe it was they alone who were bringing healing services to this community, completely negating the existing network of indigenous medical personnel already serving the same patients the new health centres were targetting. Anthropologist Simon Messing published several studies in the 1960s showing how the health centres failed to change even the most basic behaviours of the communities they served (e.g. more rigorous hand-washing), pinning that failure directly on the lack of involvement of indigenous health leaders (debetras and wogeshas).

Modernism and development politics in Ethiopia

By Jacob McKnight

There are two paths between Addis Ababa’s top hotels. If you ask the guards at the Hilton how to get to the nearby Sheraton, they will politely point right, up the smooth concrete road. If you ask one of the kids who variously shine shoes, sell gum, shout ‘Farenji!’ and offer to be your guide however, they will beckon you across the street, off the tarmac, and onto a scrub road leading along the Sheraton’s high walls. While the guard’s looping route takes you past manicured gardens, and the newly painted periphery of the Prime Minister’s residence, the kid’s route is quicker and dirtier. Tin-roofed, but long established huts are stacked tight, breaking only for steep, winding pathways and haphazard open drains. Thousands live in these simple homes and go about their business while tourists, businesspeople and aid workers swell the swimming pools beyond the fences and guards.

This stark divide was shocking to me five years ago as I walked the route as a first time visitor to the country, but the locals didn’t see what I did. Over time, I became aware of a diverse middle class of shop owners, taxi drivers, and civil servants who lived in the centre of Addis Ababa on mediocre earnings and gave the city a feel of openness and egalitarianism. They saw wealth but didn’t feel threatened by it and were able to live happy and full lives amidst the bustle of Addis Abba.

All across the country however, a new economic urgency seems to be taking hold. As quick as the capital’s concrete shopping centres continue to rise, so Ethiopians are asked to modernise, develop and participate in building the country anew. The government has led the way. Alongside Korean laid roads, Chinese foremen oversee the installation of fibre-optic cable, promising broadband internet access to newly connected populations. In the fields beyond, recently constructed tunnel tents house flower growing businesses born out of fresh international partnerships. More ambitiously, the government is building the largest hydro-electric dam in Africa and aims to be a net exporter of energy when it is complete. Even within the country’s notoriously bureaucratic ministries, the spirit of modernism is taking hold. The Ethiopian civil service has completed the largest implementation of Business Process Reengineering ever attempted, and now schools, council offices and hospitals all talk of processes rather than departments and customers rather than citizens.

There are many positives to this new spirit of progress and Ethiopia remains a country sorely in need of development. But despite the positive rhetoric of the Ministry of Information, something is not quite right.