Somalia Findings
Key findings from PeaceRep research in Somalia (2021 – 2026)
PeaceRep’s Somalia research has been led by LSE CCRG.
PeaceRep’s Somalia research has aimed to deepen understandings of the country’s fragmented predicament, ten years after the establishment of the federal government and in light of ongoing conflict and political instability, both domestically and regionally.
Browse our key findings in the tabs below.
Overview
Somalia’s political – peace, conflict and governance – trajectory today is extremely unclear. This follows a concerted offensive against Al Shabaab launched in early 2022, but which has seen the group emerge stronger than ever, and where political elites at federal and state levels are increasingly discredited for their internal polarisation and corrupt practices.
Today, Somalia’s external sovereignty, symbolised by its presence on the UN Security Council, sharply contrasts with its internal sovereignty, where these different state and non-state entities compete for legitimacy and authority, in a wider regional and global environment where domestic elites can turn to competing external patrons for political and financial support (Ibrahim and Majid 2024).
Undergirding this landscape is a transactional logic, structured as a political marketplace, and evident in election politics, regional security relations and the capture of international assistance. The latest manifestation of this logic applies to peacemaking itself, where competition to engage Al Shabaab in dialogue is developing. In spite of these tensions, examples of civic actors, networks and practices can also be found within the country, such as in the still holding today several years after its initial completion. The agreement stands as a positive example of successful multi-scalar peacemaking, where international support complemented Somali agency (Majid, Abdirahman and Theros 2025b).
PeaceRep has examined how political authority in Somalia is continually negotiated across local to international levels, shaping conflict dynamics and prospects for peace. The research highlights a recurring pattern: transactional logics that blur the boundaries between domestic and international authority. These dynamics reveal how political order in Somalia is both sustained and contested across scales, illustrating how external engagement reshapes politics, while highlighting the important role of Somali-led negotiation and civic networks in shaping possible pathways toward peace and reform.
Understanding and engaging in Somalia requires grappling with and integrating the different scales (local, national, regional and, indeed, global) that shape the contours of (in)stability. It also requires appreciating the different forms of information and knowledge production ecosystems, where the layered aid contracting economy creates incentives to maintain resource flows and suppress an understanding of the everyday life and aspirations of local populations.
PeaceRep research points to several strategies for informing future engagement in Somalia:
- Identify and support models for generating information and knowledge that incorporate diverse perspectives and local realities and that operate within and outside the formal aid architecture. Such models can include networks of integrity that can act as counterweights to elite and systemic capture.
- Support shared transcalar – local, national, regional, inter/trans-national – analysis mechanisms in order to inform policy and programmatic responses to political instability and opportunities for peacebuilding and/or conflict mitigation. Ethiopia will continue to be a highly consequential but unpredictable factor in Somalia political and security trajectory, which requires close monitoring, whereas engagement with Turkey could focus on encouraging the de-securitisation of development support, encourage coordination with other actors, and link cooperation to inclusive processes and accountability safeguards.
- Engagement in conflict mitigation and peacebuilding must be anchored in broader Somali-led processes that strengthen civic voices (recognizing the current ‘NGO-isation’ of civil society that, broadly speaking, is incentivized upwards towards donors rather than in representing local/national interests). This applies to contexts such as Galkayo as well as dialogue and mediation with Al Shabaab.
Peace and Security
Ethiopia and Somalia
Ethiopia and Somalia have been deeply entangled in political and security terms since the early 1990s, as the emergence and rise of the Ethiopia People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) evolved alongside the collapse and fragmentation of political order in Somalia. This entanglement was initially determined by Ethiopia’s framing of its own Somali Regional State (SRS) and Somalia itself primarily in security terms. It was also informed by the party-state discipline and strategic coherence of the EPRDF. However, over the last ten to fifteen years the penetration of a market logic has evolved in this regional entanglement, which is today much less predictable than previously and characterised by local level dealmaking in the border regions, which can be at odds with central policy or interests (in both countries) (Majid et al 2026).
Recognising the growing influence of market logics in Ethiopia’s political and security landscape, including the proliferation of brokers who operate both locally (within Ethiopia) and across Somalia’s sub-regions, is important for understanding policy coherence and cross- border conflict and instability.
Turkey in Somalia
Turkey’s role in Somalia and the wider Horn has shifted from a primarily humanitarian and development profile to a more overtly strategic, competitive, and security-centric posture. Ankara presents itself as an anti-colonial partner that avoids Western-style conditionality, a stance that opens doors and appeals to local sensibilities. However, this access increasingly serves a broader status-seeking and order-shaping project in a multipolar environment that favours transactional deals and competitive positioning against regional rivals and Western partners (Sofos 2023).
Militarisation has become a central feature of Turkey’s approach to peace and development. Alongside soft-power programmes (TİKA, Diyanet, Maarif), Ankara prioritises defence cooperation and the expansion of a military footprint. Turkish involvement is often partisan and non-inclusive; security assistance and know how transfer can fragment institutions and cultivate dependence on Turkey. This approach is closely linked to commercial and geostrategic aims, such as infrastructure concessions or port/airport management, and prospective energy deals are intertwined with security cooperation, creating mutually reinforcing channels of influence. Ankara’s ‘package’ (aid + projects + security) privileges stability as containment and regime relationships over democratisation or rights protection, and it positions Turkish firms to benefit from state-to-state deals (Sofos 2023).
Impacts on societies and states are mixed and often problematic. While Turkish support has improved some services and capacities, Ankara’s competitive, securitised approach can exacerbate elite polarisation, sideline inclusive mediation, and hard-wire dependence on external security provision. Intra-regional rivalries (with UAE, Egypt and others) further externalise local conflicts, raising the risk of proxy dynamics that weaken institutional coherence and public accountability. The net effect can be a narrowing of political space, reinforcement of executive power, and a development path skewed toward mega-projects and security sectors rather than broad-based, locally owned peacebuilding (Sofos 2023).
Sustaining the post-agreement peace – Galkayo, Somalia
Several years on from the signing of the , peace has been maintained in this critical border town in spite of bouts of revenge killings and a wider context of violence and insecurity. This relative success reflects the potential of adaptive, trans-scalar mediation efforts and customary governance mechanisms, which contributed to the agreement-making process, where Somali agency and networking was critical and complemented by international support. Unlike many national agreements, which often emphasize formal power-sharing frameworks, Galkayo’s process relied on flexibility, iterative problem-solving, and localized legitimacy rather than rigid institutional designs. This flexibility, while important, exposes a key vulnerability: the process has remained highly dependent on the leadership, networks, and credibility of individuals. Furthermore, the agreement-making process has remained incomplete due to the lack of sustained commitment from national and international actors (Majid, Abdirahman and Theros 2025b).
Governance
Multiple levels of fragmentation
Political order is fragmented at multiple levels in Somalia, including between the centre (the Federal Government of Somalia) and the peripheries (the Federal Member States), and within the peripheries. The case of Gedo region exemplifies this wider pattern, initially incorporated into Jubbaland as one of its three regions, albeit under a dominant and highly coercive political entrepreneur, but later (2019 to the present) existing in political limbo, competed over by elites in Mogadishu and Kismayo, who instrumentalise local and regional (Ethiopian and Kenyan) networks in their attempts to gain authority over the region, primarily for the purposes of running parallel election processes (Majid and Abdirahman 2025).
Kismayo and Galkayo represent two important urban environments with widely different governance contexts, representative of a further level of fragmentation. Governance in Kismayo is informed by the ‘Islamist turn’ in Somalia and its geographic proximity to the militant Islamist group Al-Shabaab. Galkayo is a divided border town in central Somalia, marking the boundary between Puntland and Galmudug, and the different clan and sub-clan identities on either side of the border. While the Jubbaland authority in Kismayo is the dominant political and security actor, exercising a monopoly on violence, political and security authority in Galkayo is contested between multiple actors (Majid, Abdirahman, and Theros 2025).
Constitution-building
In Galmudug and Hirshabelle, despite efforts to build formal administrative systems, local governance remains contested and fragmented, with clans, sub-clans, and Al Shabab exerting significant control in the two states. Formal institutions often coexisted with informal, hybrid structures, where authority is negotiated.
Our research has found that local governance is being shaped by clan alliances (e.g. influencing appointments to town councils and assemblies) and characterized by multilevel and plural hybrid (formal and non-formal) institutions.
Clan alliances are undermining formal governance functions (taxation, lawmaking, and accountability), in order to allow substate formal authority to continue to exist under extraconstitutional control, without permitting formal authority to become powerful enough to independently mediate local interests.
Our research has also highlighted how federal manipulation is, influencing local appointments to secure political power, as clan leaders indirectly affect federal parliamentary and presidential elections. (Wahiu and Abebe 2025).
For constitution-building, the struggle between federal influence and regional autonomy suggests that a federal constitution may remain unimplemented unless it aligns with local clan dynamics and legitimacy.
Corruption and Control of Resources
Checkpoints and sub-national governance
In Somalia’s trade-based economy, checkpoints function as sites of power generating critical resources at the individual and collective levels for both individual political entrepreneurs – located within the ‘statebuilding’ project (organised as a political marketplace) – as well as non-state actors such as Al Shabaab. Political – or checkpoint – entrepreneurs utilise revenue from checkpoints as part of their political budgets to develop or maintain a coercive capacity (e.g., a militia), leverage the support of foreign security actors (e.g. neighbouring country forces) and pursue their own political projects, raising their value and profile in order to engage in the political marketplace and extract further rents (such as from the aid sector) (Majid, Abdirahman and Adan 2025).
The competition for checkpoints and the lack of regulation can profoundly affect the everyday movement of people and goods, leading to support for groups such as Al Shabaab. The proliferation of checkpoints and the difficulty of addressing associated insecurity reveals the underlying fragility of ‘state-building’ processes in Somalia (Majid, Abdirahman and Adan 2025).
Corruption and aid diversion
Corruption and aid diversion are pervasive phenomena in Somalia. However, reductive views of corruption are problematic, both for their tendency to stigmatise ‘national’ or ‘local’ actors as if international actors are somehow separate and ‘innocent’ of such practices and networks and, secondly, for misunderstanding the motivations for and functions of corruption. In weakly institutionalized systems, corruption is central to how power is financed, exercised and maintained and forms part of the logic of political order making; it operates as a means through which authority is consolidated, alliances are sustained and control is negotiated. Furthermore, corruption cannot be understood within national boundaries alone. Donor financing and aid systems often reproduce the very same incentive structures they seek to dismantle (Jackson and Majid 2024).
Despite repeated reform efforts, Somalia’s politics continues to operate through transactional logics sustained by elite bargaining over access to external and domestic resources. International engagement reinforces these dynamics: donor-financed procurement in logistics, security, and development sectors channels rents through a layered contracting economy that sustains patronage networks and political competition. These flows intensify during election cycles, when political finance becomes essential for securing alliances and votes. In this system, aid and state revenues merge into a political economy of power, linking domestic authority to external funding structures (Majid and Abdirahman 2024).
Corruption functions as political practice: a set of informal rules that organise exchange, distribute resources, and underpin authority. Viewing corruption in this way shifts the analytical lens from individual misconduct toward the structural incentives and political economies that reproduce and sustain it (Majid and Abdirahman 2024).
References
PeaceRep’s key findings series presents a top-line overview of findings from the breadth and depth of the consortium’s data-driven and in-country research between 2021 – 2027. The findings presented here represent our main contributions to the field, but are not necessarily exhaustive of all PeaceRep work on each thematic and geographic area. Read the individual works linked here for more detailed analysis. To view all PeaceRep publications, visit the publications database.
Researchers involved
Khalif Abdirahman, Adem Abebe, Guhad Adan, Ahmed Sh. Ibrahim, Ashley Jackson, Nisar Majid, Spyros Sofos, Marika Theros, Winluck Wahiu
Citation
Majid, N. (2026). PeaceRep Key Findings: Somalia. PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh
References
Ibrahim, A.S. and Majid, S. (2024). Questions of Sovereignty – Somalia on the UN Security Council. PeaceRep Blog. 2 Oct 2024. https://peacerep.org/2024/10/02/questions-of-sovereignty-somalia-on-the-un-security-council/
Jackson, A. and Majid, N. (2024). Time for Change: The Normalization of Corruption and Diversion in the Humanitarian Sector (PeaceRep Report). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh
Majid, N. and Abdirahman, K. (2024). Mid-term, Corruption and International Engagement – xaa iigu jira? (what’s in it for me?) (PeaceRep Policy Brief). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh
Majid, N. & Abdirahman, K. (2025). Gedo, Jubbaland and the Translocal Marehan: State fragmentation, identity politics and regional reconfigurations in the Somali territories (PeaceRep Report). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh
Majid, N., Abdirahman, K., & Adan, G. (2025). Checkpoints, Ma’awisley and the Political Entrepreneur (PeaceRep Report). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh
Majid, N., Abdirahman, K., & Theros, M. (2025a). Mapping the Fragments – Justice and Security in Somalia: Galkayo and Kismayo (PeaceRep Report). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh
Majid, N., Abdirahman, K., & Theros, M. (2025b). Sustaining the Post-Agreement Peace – Galkayo, Somalia (PeaceRep Policy Brief). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh
Majid, N., Abdirahman, K., Ali, J., & Adan, G. (2026). Ethiopia and Somalia’s Political-Security Entanglement: The Evolution of the Political Marketplace in the Horn of Africa (PeaceRep Report). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh
Sofos, S. (2023). Navigating the Horn: Turkey’s Forays in East Africa (Global Transitions Report). PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh
Wahiu, W. & Abebe, A. (2025). From Substate Governance to Constitution-building at the Centre: A View from Somalia (International IDEA Report). International IDEA.