Many of Somalia’s productive sectors, already weak before the civil war have been damaged in the course of the country’s ten years of armed conflict and state collapse countries structures that sustained an industrial base and agricultural one have been dismantled and sold for scrap metal. The agricultural production has sharply declined from pre-war level due to deteriorating canal and flood control systems, lack of agricultural inputs and poor security. Livestock sector, historically the most productive part of the Somali economy, has survived reasonably well due in part to its relative autonomy from government services.
It has revealed not essential a guide in order to address all the efforts for an economic local growth especially for the involved country’s area interested also in commercial trade.
Among the different reasons which sheltered indirectly this sector was the destructured commercial trade and an almost complete autonomy form the main economic play role.
An international boundary – the border between Kenya and what once was the Democratic Republic of Somalia – traverses the region of study. While it has never really constrained population movements, the border has been problematic since early in the colonial period and, most dramatically, after Kenya’s independance in 1963. With the collapse of the Somali state in January 1991, the boundaries between the two countries and between different administrative units on the Somalia side became even more ambiguous than before.
Herders and traders still talk about this or that district of Somalia as if they are government units, and surprisingly, some degree of local civil administration exists in the absence of a formal government.
However in 2001 administrative and even international boundaries assume secondary roles to the “real” demarcations enforced by different militia and clan-based factions.
These divisions curtail population movements between different militia controlled areas, generate transit taxes from merchants and others, and in the case of the area’s largest city Kisimayo – cut it off from the rest of the region.
The lower Jubba Region comprises 35,114 square km of remarkably flat land, more than 90 per cent of it classified as rangeland and it encompasses administrative district: Kisimayo area in front of Indian Ocean completely isolated from the internal area west of Badhaade, north east Jamaame area, north Afmadow.
Trade in livestock in this region is permitted mainly for a various reason:
the presence of the Jubba and Tana rivers which make the live stock stationary possible waiting for the trade in the local market of that area.
Garissa District, Kenya in turn, lies adjacent to the Lower Jubba Region and covers 43,931 square km of similar terrain, with the Tana River forming its western border.
The two rivers, thee Jubba and the Tana, flow parallel to each other in a southerly direction and roughly shape the external limits of this region. The distance from east to west between the two waterways is an estimated 360 km.
The addition of a new district, a joint effort of local clan elders and the occupying UN forces at the time, illustrates just how much local politics are alive and well in southern Somalia even in the absence of a state.
Most cultivation in the region is carried out in Jamaame and Kisimayo District on the Somalia side and along the western portion of Garissa District, Kenya.
The large-scale irrigation schemes, managed by government, no longer exist in most of the Jubba Valley. The majority were pillaged shortly after the government’s collapse or, in a few cases, have been taken over by militia heads and their followers.
The environmental characteristics discussed above help to explain the meaning of the livestock sector to the region’s economy.
Indeed prior to the war the region contained approximately 25% of the national cattle herd or an estimated 900,000 animals.
Recent reports and surveys of the area with livestock herders indicate that the livestock herds of southern Somalia have not suffered nearly as much as elsewhere in the country. Old heritage from the past has been important facing with an absence of government “guide”. In a relevant historical time such as this, it avoided to increase rural economy wasting phases and losing “prospective” of economic growth.
The main productive factors, as a basic elements of an archaic tradition, this time play a relevant role as a “constant power-on engine” of a rural economy: this substitute an economy planning impossible in time of war and local clan terrorism where poverty and hungry are constant elements of a “blocked” political “scenario”.
