By Ahmed Adan Sooldaad

The debate over Somalia’s offshore exploration deal with Turkey has become a proxy war between optimists and cynics. Both are asking the wrong question.

In principle, resource extraction frequently contributes to the development of state capacity rather than awaiting its prior existence. Somalia is currently engaged in a familiar debate. The offshore oil exploration agreement with Turkey has divided opinion along familiar lines.

On one side, proponents regard it as a long-overdue economic advancement. Conversely, critics caution against corruption, foreign exploitation, and the resource curse. Both perspectives present valid arguments; however, both also overlook what is most crucial. Nations are not built under perfect conditions. They never have been

The case for waiting is a case for standing still

Much of the scepticism rests on an unstated assumption: that Somalia should hold off. Wait until governance improves. Wait until corruption is reined in. Wait until institutions are strong enough to handle oil revenues responsibly. It is a seductive argument. It is also historically illiterate. No country in Africa or anywhere else has discovered natural resources only after achieving political maturity.

Development has traditionally been chaotic, inconsistent, and challenging. Wealth doesn’t come as a reward for stability; often, it helps create stability. Insisting on perfection before making progress is just a more acceptable form of stagnation.

The fears are real. So is the cost of inaction.

None of this means the warnings should be dismissed. The resource curse is not a myth. Across the continent, sudden resource wealth has entrenched elites, fuelled conflict, and bypassed the people it was supposed to benefit. Somalia, still navigating fragile political structures and serious security challenges, is not immune to any of that. But fear, even when justified, is not a strategy.

Somalia’s problems do not disappear in the absence of oil. Poverty, unemployment, and chronic underinvestment are not background noise – they are active emergencies. Choosing not to develop resources does not protect stability. It simply extends the waiting.

What does African history actually tell us?

The continent’s experience with resource extraction is more complicated – and more instructive – than either camp acknowledges.

Ghana did not enter the oil sector with clean governance or robust institutions. Its early years were marked by genuine uncertainty, political turbulence, and legitimate public anxiety. Yet institutions adapted. Regulations improved. Resource revenues, however, unevenly distributed, contributed to national development over time.

Elsewhere in West Africa and in southern African countries such as Nigeria and Angola, extraction began under far worse conditions – during periods of instability, weak oversight, and, in some cases, outright conflict in Angola. Those years were often defined by corruption and elite capture. But they were not the end of the story. As the civil war ended and political systems matured, the same resources that once generated disorder gradually began to support something better. The lesson is not that early exploitation is harmless. It is that development is not a single decision. It is a long, difficult, frequently ugly process.

Somalia is not choosing between idealism and recklessness.

The current debate keeps presenting Somalia with a false binary: either wait until the state is strong enough or proceed and accept that exploitation is inevitable. That is not a real choice. What Somalia actually needs is managed risk. That means moving forward with exploration while simultaneously building transparency into contracts and revenue flows, strengthening public oversight, developing legal frameworks for resource governance, and ensuring communities have a genuine voice in the process. It is not about waiting for a perfect system. It is about building one while the work is already underway.

Why Turkey, and why now, matters

There is a geopolitical dimension to this that the domestic debate tends to ignore.

Investment is not a given. Interest from global partners shifts quickly, shaped by energy markets, international politics, and competing priorities. A partner willing to engage today may not be available in five years. For Somalia, the relationship with Turkey is not simply about oil. It is part of a broader strategic partnership – one that touches infrastructure, security, and long-term development. Rejecting engagement is not neutrality. It is a choice, and it carries real consequences.

The strongest argument for moving forward is not money- It is momentum.

Exploration does not lock Somalia into a predetermined outcome. It starts a process – one that future governments will inherit, refine, and, where necessary, reform. Institutions that are fragile today can grow stronger. Leaders who are imperfect now may rise to the demands of managing real economic stakes. The idea that Somalia must fix its governance before accessing its resources reverses the sequence. More often, it is the resources themselves – however imperfectly managed at first – that become part of how governance improves.

Somalia does not need blind optimism. It does not need paralysing pessimism either.
What it needs is honesty: about the risks, about the costs of doing nothing, and about the reality that progress – like nation-building itself – is messy, nonlinear, and never perfectly timed. The question is not whether Somalia should move forward. It is whether Somalia is ready to accept that moving forward, under imperfect conditions, is exactly how every nation that ever developed its resources actually did it.

Ahmed Adan Sooldaad
Email: Sooldaad33@gmail.com