By Fartaag Research & Consulting

Government Support to Local Non-State-Actors

Today, the diversion of domestic revenue and the mismanagement of donor funding in Somalia have created two parallel governments in the country. The federal government created an alternative government through non-state-actors (NSAs) funding. Instead of developing functioning government structures, especially government institutions, the federal government authorities preferred investing both donor and domestic funding into non-state actors, in which they have personal vested interests. It is worth mentioning that the majority of the government funded non-state-actors are of Islamist nature (see table 23, 24, 25, 30, and 31).

Government authorities were often affiliated to support of these groups making their relationship unethical and questionable to begin with. This is proven by the itemization of recurrent expenditures where majority of the budget is used for funding Islamic Charitable Organizations, Universities and Insurgencies as shown in table 1. This is despite the creation of Somali Financial Management Information System (SFMIS), which is supposed to track the itemization of expenditures.

For instance, in 2015 alone, USD 22,091,672 was allocated to SIMAD University, whose co-founder and honorary member happens to be President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.

This method of diverting funds is not only intended to help Somali Islamists leaders capitalize in their vested interests, but it is also a means of maintaining the status quo. In other words, this is a means of avoiding accountability, which is a natural result of having fully-fledged, functioning government institutions.

Read more: BREAKING POINT IN SOMALIA: How state failure was financed and by whom

Source: Fartaag Research & Consulting