By Mohamed Abdi Mohamud (Xalwad)

There is a quiet assumption embedded in how Somalia is covered, that what matters happens in major cities, along tarmac roads, and within reach of international cameras. Bosaso and Galkacayo receive their share of attention. But what of the districts that lie beyond the paved road? What of the communities that have built something remarkable, largely unseen?

In late April of this year, the Association of Local Governments of Puntland (ALGAPL) conducted an outreach mission to five member districts; Bosaso, Galkacayo, Baargaal, Ufayn, and Eyl. It is the latter three that I wish to write about. They are mid-sized districts, each sitting off the main tarmac road, each requiring hours of difficult travel to reach. And each one carried a story that deserves to be told.

What I found was not what many would expect. These are not struggling outposts waiting to be rescued. They are, in many ways, models of community-driven development, of social cohesion, and of what decentralisation can look like when it quietly works.

Infrastructure Built by the Community, Not AWaited from Above

Perhaps the most striking observation across all three districts was this: the communities did not wait.

In Baargaal – a nine-hour drive from the nearest tarmac junction, perched on the Indian Ocean near the tip of the Horn of Africa — the community mobilised approximately $400,000 USD to construct a hospital that now includes an operating theatre and serves as a referral centre for surrounding districts including Bareeda, Qumbax, and Xaafuun. The city has reliable electricity, a functional water pipeline serving the entire urban area, multiple secondary schools where none existed a few years ago, and a university currently under construction. Internet connectivity is comparable to Puntland’s main cities.

Ufayn tells a similar story. Sitting at the foot of the Calimiskad mountains, about two hours from Bosaso but long perceived as peripheral, the district recently opened a new wing of its administrative building, funded entirely by community contributions. Its hospital, also community-built, now serves the surrounding area. The water supply is drawn from a natural spring near the town, delivering quality that rivals treated water in larger cities.

Eyl, roughly five hours from Garowe on the Indian Ocean coast, has reliable water, electricity, schools, health facilities, and functioning hotels — in both its coastal enclave of Baday and its elevated inland settlement and villages.

What binds these three communities is a culture of self-reliance that predates any formal development programme. People here do not primarily identify as recipients of aid; they identify as builders of their own towns. This is not a development model that was designed or imported, it grew organically, and it is worth studying.

Social Cohesion as a Foundation for Governance

Development infrastructure can be built with money. Social cohesion cannot be purchased, and it is far rarer.

Eyl offers perhaps the most remarkable example. Over the past 35 years – the entire period since the collapse of Somalia’s central government – the district has recorded only seven homicide incidents. None were linked to inter-clan conflict or retaliatory violence. In a country where clan dynamics have often driven cycles of conflict, this is not a minor footnote. It is an extraordinary achievement.

Eyl is home to a diverse population — multiple clans are living alongside one another with visible mutual respect. Walking through its streets, this coexistence feels embedded and genuine, not performed.

Baargaal offers its own expression of communal trust. A colleague who had previously worked in the district shared a detail that has stayed with me: in the local camel-herding tradition, animals are released to graze freely and retrieved weeks or months later, with no fear of theft. In much of Somalia, and indeed much of Puntland, this would be inconceivable. Here, it is simply how things are done. We walked freely in Baargaal in the evenings and in the early morning hours. District officials told us we could move anywhere in the city at any time. In Ufayn, the mayor walked us through the town on foot without security guards; because none was needed, showing us the hospital and the areas now threatened by encroaching sand dunes.

These districts demonstrate that peace is not only an absence of conflict. It is a cultivated social asset, one that enables everything else.

Climate Change: The Threat That Cannot Be Ignored

Against this backdrop of quiet progress, a grave threat is advancing.

In Baargaal, the town sits on a narrow strip of land between a dry riverbed – recently reactivated by heavy seasonal rains – and the Indian Ocean. If a serious flood event occurs, and such events are becoming more frequent across the region, the entire town could be swept into the sea. This is not a distant hypothetical; it is a foreseeable risk that demands urgent attention and planning.

In Ufayn, a large sand dune is slowly consuming parts of the city. Without intervention, it could render significant portions of the town uninhabitable.

In Eyl, farmland that communities depended on for generations has been washed away by flooding. Land that was once cultivated is now barren and degraded.

These are districts that have built hospitals with their own hands, maintained peace without security forces, and governed themselves with limited external support. It would be a particular injustice if climate change, a phenomenon driven almost entirely by the industrialised world – were to undo what these communities have worked for. Puntland state and its partners must treat climate adaptation in these coastal and off-road districts as a priority, not an afterthought.

The Fiscal Gap: Self-Reliance Has Its Limits

Decentralisation as a policy is only as meaningful as the resources that accompany it. Puntland’s district administrations have the legal authority to collect certain local revenues, but the economic base of rural, off-road districts is fundamentally different from that of a trading hub like Bosaso.

The communities of Baargaal, Ufayn, and Eyl have demonstrated exceptional capacity to mobilise local contributions for specific projects. But operational governance – sustaining health services, maintaining schools, paying district staff – requires a steady and predictable fiscal base. Local fundraising drives can build a hospital; they cannot reliably keep it running.

In federal systems and devolved governance models across Africa – Kenya, Nigeria, and others -subnational governments receive substantial fiscal transfers from the state to ensure that geography does not determine the quality of services a citizen receives. Puntland has the architecture for such a system. What is needed now is the political will to make it functional and equitable.

Without fiscal transfers calibrated to need rather than to economic output, Puntland risks a deepening inequality between its urban centers and its rural districts – even as those rural districts demonstrate, through their own efforts, that they are fully capable of governing themselves when given the tools.

Governance Capacity: Young Administrations, High Potential

Puntland’s local governance is undergoing a real transformation. For the first time, district councils are elected directly by the people rather than appointed through elder-led processes – a genuine democratic milestone that has brought energy and fresh mandates into district administrations.

But democratic energy without institutional grounding carries risks. Newly elected councilors arrive motivated yet technically unprepared for the demands of governance. The consequences are already visible: Galkacayo has cycled through three mayors in three years, and other districts have experienced similar instability. When democratic structures produce churn rather than continuity, communities begin to lose confidence in the very system meant to serve them.

In Baargaal, the administration is newly established and still finding its footing — a situation that needs structured support before it becomes a vulnerability.

The answer is not to slow democratization but to invest seriously in what follows the election: budget development, transparent resource management, and navigating community expectations. A peer-learning framework coordinated through Ministry of interior, Federal affairs and democratization of Puntland (MOIFAD), allowing stronger districts to mentor newer ones, would go a long way. So would formal recognition of high-performing districts — because visible accountability creates the culture the whole system needs.

Puntland’s democratic renewal is worth protecting. It will only deliver on its promise if the institutions supporting it grow as fast as the expectations placed upon them.

Education for Opportunity, Not Only for Access

For the past two decades, Puntland’s education priority – rightly – was access. Getting children into school, building classrooms, training teachers. That mission has made real progress: Baargaal now has four secondary schools; Eyl and Ufayn have similarly expanded their educational infrastructure. The next challenge is different. Young people in these districts are talented and educated and they are leaving. They move to Garowe, to Bosaso, and eventually abroad, in search of employment and opportunity. This is not a failure of character; it is a rational response to a mismatch between the skills the education system produces and the opportunities available locally.

The solution lies in reimagining what schooling means in these communities. Integrating vocational and practical skills into secondary education aligned with the actual economic fabric of each district, would equip students not only to pass exams, but to contribute to and build livelihoods in their own towns. A student in Baargaal who graduates with both academic knowledge and practical skills in fisheries management or boat maintenance is far more likely to stay, and to thrive. The same logic applies to Ufayn’s fragrance trade, Eyl’s tourism potential, and the pastoral economies that connect all three.

Conclusion: A Hidden Gem Deserves to Be Found

Baargaal, Ufayn, and Eyl are not development success stories in the conventional sense; there is no large donor project to credit, no international agency holding a ribbon. They are something more interesting: communities that have largely built their own path, sustained their own peace, and maintained their own dignity, in some of the most remote and difficult terrain in the Horn of Africa.

Puntland has long argued that it offers a model for Somalia’s federalism. These three districts make that argument concretely and compellingly. They are living proof that decentralization works when communities own it, that peace is achievable when it is culturally rooted, and that development can be driven from within rather than delivered from outside.

The foundation is there. What remains is to build on it — with fiscal equity, governance support, and a state that treats decentralization as a living commitment. Invest in these districts, and Puntland does not just strengthen its own future. It writes a chapter that the rest of Somalia can learn from.

Email: Mohamedamin2@gmail.com
Executive Director of ALGAPL.
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This article is based on a field outreach mission conducted in late April 2026 to five member districts of ALGAPL — Bosaso, Galkacayo, Baargaal, Ufayn, and Eyl. All observations and assessments are the author’s own.