Abdi Addow likes to have oodkac for breakfast, the jerky-style beef cubes that Somalis usually eat with injera flatbread. Addow especially loves his mother’s serving, but since he doesn’t live with her in the Somali capital, he logs online and uses a third-party delivery service to bring it to him from her place.
Long beset by civil war, Somalia was among the last African nations to go online. Internet penetration still remains low, high poverty levels persist, there’s lack of a strong central authority, weak regulatory policies, besides the absence of addresses and well-labeled streets, which is bound to create logistical inefficiencies for start-ups.
Despite this, or perhaps because of these challenges, the Horn of Africa nation is experiencing a strong rise in digital businesses, with local entrepreneurs building businesses that are disrupting existing trade models and transforming the way people shop.
In Somali cities like Mogadishu, Hargeisa, and Garowe, there’s an emerging e-commerce market, with founders establishing consumer-to-consumer, business-to-business, or business-to-consumer applications that allow for the purchase and dispatch of products or services. Together, these platforms are encouraging a budding tech sector, getting more people online, help to create some much-needed jobs, and are attracting the attention of local angel investors—even if that’s on a smaller scale.