Context
The agriculture sector has been historically and continues to be the backbone of the Somali
economy. Livestock and crops remain the main sources of economic activity, employment,
and exports in Somalia1. It has a crucial role to play in Somalia’s renewed pursuit to achieve
peace and political stability through, among other strategies, food security, job creation, and,
eventually, sustainable economic growth. In fact, a large proportion of the country’s
population live in rural areas and derive their livelihoods from agriculture, livestock and
related activities. The agriculture sector development is therefore a central to future national
and international interventions aimed at addressing undernutrition and food insecurity in
Somalia, as well as tackling the widespread poverty, which is the prime driver the resource
based social conflicts and the ensuing political instability throughout the country.
However, the sector’s productivity is currently very low due to several interlinked factors
including security problems in main agricultural regions, conflict and frequent droughts
which have forced displacement of large proportion of rural population to urban centres, poor
irrigation and rural infrastructure, as well as limited and inappropriate adoption of modern
agricultural practices such as use of mechanisation, high quality seeds, pesticides and
pesticides2. The impact of constraints is exasperated by the lack of institutional and technical
capacities in the current post-conflict situation of Somalia.