Foreign actors in Somalia: Moving beyond boots on the ground

Somalia’s strategic location and precarious security situation has seen a decades-long presence by foreign actors. This presence is slowly shifting beyond just a military one –boots on the ground – towards broader commercial and political relations, but the process is complicated.

Somalia faces a long list of challenges: security, political, economic, and environmental. Despite decades of domestic, regional, and international efforts, the country is still characterised by precarious internal security, fractured, and contested governance, and a struggling economy compounded by the recent impact of the Covid pandemic and at present a dangerous famine.

The role of several foreign actors in Somalia is analysed at four levels in this whitepaper, from neighbouring and regional states through to global powers and intergovernmental organisations. But as relations develop, they are not always between equals – and wider political considerations, including local, regional and even global priorities, are coming into play.

This whitepaper is a follow-up to our whitepaper in July that looked at Somalia’s development of a maritime policy and what that might mean for commercial trade in the region.