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“The next appointment you sign will either open a door for Somalia or lock it. Choose carefully before the ink dries.”By: Mohamed Mahmud Allaale
The man in the grey suit asked me how to spell “memorandum.”
He was not joking. He held a pen worth more than my first television salary, and the document in front of him was due at the Prime Minister’s office by four. Outside, the generator coughed diesel into the courtyard. I spelled it slowly. He wrote it down. He got it wrong anyway.
I have worked inside the Somali government long enough to stop being shocked by that moment. That is the part that frightens me.
The arithmetic that put him there is called 4.5.
It emerged from the 2000 Arta peace conference in Djibouti, when a country without a functioning central state needed a way to share political power. The four major clan families—Darod, Hawiye, Dir and Digil-Mirifle—each received an equal share, while minority communities collectively received the remaining half-share.
It was a peace formula, and it arguably saved us. Today, it is drowning us.
On paper, it primarily governs political representation at the highest levels. In practice, it seeps downward like rainwater through a cracked roof, until it reaches my corridor as a phrase whispered over cardamom shaah: waa kursigeena. It’s our seat.
Recently, I watched a video about John Calhoun, an American scientist who, in 1968, created an experimental environment for mice. Abundant food, plentiful water, no predators. Yet the colony eventually collapsed.
I watched it twice and kept seeing familiar faces.
Calhoun’s experiment cannot explain human institutions, but its images of social dysfunction stayed with me.
We have our own scramble for titles: forty people lobbying for one chair with a flag behind it. Positions become prizes to be distributed rather than responsibilities to be fulfilled.
That is the comfort of a 4.5 seat. Once your lineage claims it, competence can become secondary. Some occupants guard their positions, ensuring that nobody more capable gets close.
Others resemble what Calhoun called “the beautiful ones”: perfectly groomed, avoiding every fight, producing little of value.
In communications, we call them Igusawir. Take my picture.
They planned nothing. But the moment the photographs go online, my phone rings: Why am I not in the frame?
Ask an Igusawir what their directorate changed this year for a mother in Baidoa, and watch the silence fill the room.
Consider what happens when a directorate falls vacant. Before anyone asks what the job requires, someone asks whose turn it is.
Imagine an appointment made primarily to satisfy political expectations. The new director struggles with the budget, experienced staff become frustrated, and important files begin accumulating.
Removing an underperforming official can then become politically complicated because an administrative decision risks being interpreted as an insult to an entire community.
So the official stays. The failure stays. And the salary continues.
Multiply that across government institutions. A ministry is only as strong as its weakest signature.
I will not pretend to be innocent. I have drunk that same shaah and nodded at things that deserved a fist on the table.
Silence is a kind of seat, too. But something is shifting.
Late one night, I found a young woman I’ll call Saida sitting on the floor of a server room, her laptop balanced on a paint tin, rebuilding a records system that had stopped working three days earlier.
Nobody had asked her. She was not even being paid. Yet. “If I go home,” she shrugged, “the files don’t move tomorrow.”
There are more people like her in government than you might think: returnees from the diaspora and graduates of Mogadishu’s universities who can code, draft policy and understand budgets.
They see what the rest of us pretend not to see: the clans are not the problem. The problem is allowing a political compromise reached in 2000 to determine professional appointments decades later.
The guns may fall quiet. The formula never gets the memo.
Here is the part that should comfort the elders: 4.5 does not have to die for merit to live.
Keep it at the political door.
Every clan has engineers, economists, lawyers, diplomats and linguists. The formula may determine which community nominates, but it has never required that community to send its loudest son instead of its best daughter.
Before appointing a director or ambassador, leaders should ask one question: What is your plan for the first hundred days, and how will we know it worked?
Test candidates transparently. Evaluate their qualifications. Measure their performance against outcomes that matter to ordinary citizens.
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Your clan can give you a seat. It cannot do the work for you.
Imagine Somalia appointing an ambassador to Country A who speaks its language fluently, understands its political culture and knows how to negotiate access to its markets.
That is not merely charm. It is access.
And access opens doors.
We have Somalis who speak Kiswahili like someone from Mombasa and Arabic like someone from Jeddah. We have professionals capable of representing the country internationally.
We already have the people. We simply need to appoint them where their abilities can serve the country best.
Picture two directors handed the same file: hundreds of young Somalis stranded in Libyan detention centres.
One sees a negotiation: which officials in Tripoli matter, which diplomatic channels can be activated, and which mothers in Galkayo are sleeping beside their phones.
The other sees a per diem and a hotel with a sea view.
Same title. Same salary.
One brings children home. The other brings back photographs.
Now picture a mother in Madiino with throat cancer, told that her treatment is available in India.
One director spends his days defending which clan holds which position. Another negotiates referral agreements and faster medical visas.
For that mother, the quality of a government appointment can mean the difference between treatment and a funeral.
The same applies to investment and markets.
Too many opportunities disappear into administrative rivalries, while fish from Africa’s longest mainland coastline goes to waste at Liido market instead of reaching customers in Doha.
In 1965, Singapore separated from Malaysia: a small port city-state with limited natural resources and heavy dependence on its neighbours.
Lee Kuan Yew wept on national television.
Within a generation, Singapore had transformed itself into one of Asia’s most prosperous economies.
Its success rested partly on education, capable public institutions, disciplined administration and professional competence.
Merit was not simply a slogan. It became an instrument of national survival.
Tell me which part Somalia cannot pursue.
What we have not yet done is decide that the country matters more than the chair.
If we did, imagining Somalia discussed alongside successful emerging economies by 2040 would not have to remain a fantasy.
It could become a plan.
None of this necessarily requires a new constitution.
It requires political leaders to apply merit-based standards within existing appointment procedures, respecting applicable laws and representation arrangements.
The elders can still nominate. Political inclusion can still be respected. But competence must determine who is trusted to deliver.
Appointments should come with clear expectations, measurable results and accountability.
The objective is not to replace clan inclusion with exclusion. It is to prevent political representation from becoming a permanent excuse for administrative failure.
The man in the grey suit is still in his chair. He nods. I nod. The generator still coughs.
Paradise, it turns out, isn’t the absence of struggle. It’s a seating chart. And whoever draws the next one is holding the pen for all of us.
I hope they’ve learned how to spell.
——
About the Author
*Mohamed Mahmud Allaale is a diplomat serving as Communications Director at Somalia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
**The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Dawan Africa.