Somali statelessness let traders move goods more cheaply than regulated neighbors.

Evidence

As the ‘president’ of Mogadishu’s commerce committee put it to the adventurous young French journalist Jerome Tubiana in February 2002, ‘We only pay the faction controlling the port of entry of our goods and then transport them by road as far as Kenya, in Ethiopia, and to Djibouti. We pass through the frontiers without too much difficulty because the frontier zones are occupied by Somalis. So our clothes or our televisions are cheaper than those of Kenyan and Ugandan traders.’ — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 686

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the economic upside of statelessness in Somalia versus regulated neighbors, challenging the assumption that state collapse is purely negative.
• XREF: Echoes debates from ‘Zero Decibels’ and other works on whether state absence necessarily means social failure. — connects to: Absence of government freed Somali traders to outprice regional competitors

Related

• Absence of government freed Somali traders to outprice regional competitors (similarity 0.94)
• Mogadishu’s economy thrived despite decade-long port closure and violence. (similarity 0.78)