Somali business leaders, investors and officials gathered in Nairobi at the weekend for the third Global Somali Entrepreneurship Forum (GSEF), where speakers urged the diaspora to put more of its money into productive investment back home.
Somalia’s Ambassador to Kenya, Jabril Ibrahim Abdulle, said remittances should go beyond household spending and be channelled into businesses in Somalia, the wider East African region and other places with a good business climate. He said trade links were improving and that diplomats from many countries ask him how to attract Somali investors, whom he described as tried and tested. He also told members of the diaspora not to worry about how long they had been away, saying what matters is what they bring home.
Dr Ahmednur Abdi, chief policy adviser and a former permanent secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister, said entrepreneurs need simpler regulations and dispute resolution, plus better roads, energy and logistics. He argued that Somalia’s private sector is outpacing the government and that the state must catch up.
Kenya’s Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale, the chief guest, said Somalia’s biggest gap is political goodwill, noting that countries that collapsed at the same time have since recovered. He urged Somalia to fully implement its East African Community obligations, especially on customs, and said the measure of the forum would be the business deals it produced, not attendance.
The two-day forum was held at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Upper Hill on October 24 and 25, with exhibitors from banking, insurance, aviation, payments and healthcare.
Source: Dawan Africa.
