By Sadaq Mohamed
Monday August 3, 2026
Somalia has made genuine strides toward regional integration. Building on our full EAC membership in March 2024, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud signed the AfCFTA Agreement into law this week. Yet market access is only the first step. We now need the production capacity, export standards and border efficiency to turn it into tangible trade gains.
At the two-day NTFC Strategic Induction and Roadmap Workshop, which concluded in Mogadishu today, we reviewed 2024 merchandise trade figures showing exports of about $1.56 billion against imports of about $9.18 billion, leaving a merchandise trade deficit of about $7.62 billion. Market access gives us an opening. Whether we use it depends on what we produce and how quickly we remove barriers traders face.
We spoke frankly about implementation and the coordination it requires across the government. We now need to turn market access into working systems and lower costs for traders.
In his official opening remarks at the workshop, Deputy Prime Minister Salah Ahmed Jama reminded us that trade facilitation is a whole-of-government responsibility. Trade policy has to connect with industrial capacity, standards and value addition. We will know it is working when more Somali products reach regional and global markets under our country’s name.
The National Trade Facilitation Committee, based in the Office of the Prime Minister, gives government agencies and businesses one place to resolve problems that cross institutional lines. Our job is to get agencies working from the same priorities, shaped by what traders face at borders, ports and markets.
Somalia has mapped and scheduled 19 priority legal and policy instruments, including laws on rules of origin, competition and consumer protection, special economic zones and intellectual property. Clear mandates and compatible procedures have to accompany digital systems. Automating confusion would move the same problems online.
For livestock trade, facilitation starts long before an animal reaches a port. It depends on animal health, credible quarantine, reliable veterinary certificates, functioning laboratories and, once operational, traceability through SOMLITS.
When one link fails, pastoralists lose bargaining power, exporters wait and buyers lose confidence. We need reforms that reduce these costs for pastoralists, women traders, small businesses and established firms.
HoA DRIVE Somalia project supports work on standards, testing, certification, the Trade Information Portal, the planned National Single Window and stronger livestock systems. We need these systems to connect with SOMCAS, SOMLITS and electronic veterinary certification.
We also need to address physical checkpoints, repeated paperwork, uncoordinated inspections and unclear charges. Traders should submit information once, face coordinated controls and know the rules before goods move.
Our trade scorecard will track certificate turnaround times, published documents and fees, duplicate inspections, cargo-release times, and the resolution of reported non-tariff barriers. We will combine administrative data with private-sector feedback, especially from women, pastoralists and small traders. We will judge progress by the days, costs and uncertainty we remove.
The workshop identified initial actions and lead agencies. These will guide the technical working groups. As NTFC Coordinator, I will press for one institutional owner, one deadline and one public measure of progress for each bottleneck. Our task is to use regional membership to lower trade costs, strengthen Somali businesses and help more Somali products compete in real markets.
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Sadaq Mohamed is the National Trade Facilitation Coordinator at the Office of the Prime Minister.
