Türkiye is a front-runner in investments in Somalia, said the chief economic adviser to the African country’s president.

"The international community has been providing support to Somalia, the World Bank, the IMF, and bilateral countries ... Türkiye is one of those countries," Hassan Adam Hosow, also executive director of the National Economic Council, told Anadolu.

Somalia is an investment destination rather than a country that needs to be helped in terms of aid, and Türkiye has made investments in its infrastructure, airports, seaports, and many social sectors, he said.

He added that Türkiye's state-run participation lender Ziraat Bank is now open in Somalia, so Türkiye now has the first mover advantage.

Debt relief

Somalia’s economy has been growing since it started its recovery in 2012, and for the past two years it grew by an average of 4 percent – a higher-than-average growth rate in most countries – and the country has achieved multiple milestones for the past three years, starting with debt relief in 2023, he said.

The private sector has been booming for a while, and the service sector is really leading economic growth, and the country has developed in areas where it can develop, he noted.

Hosow said Somalia developed a national transformation plan to guide its development trajectory in the next five years, and it also designed and developed the Centennial Vision 2060 that will guide Somalia's long-term development from now till the 100th anniversary of its independence, gained in 1960.

"That vision would see Somalia as a developed, prosperous, and peaceful country, with citizens that have around $7,000 annual per capita income, which would put us in the upper middle country status," he said.

Somalia was able to achieve debt relief in 2023 with efforts by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who started debt relief in his first term and completed this in his second, Hosow said.

So debt went from 64 percent of the country's GDP to 6 percent now, a manageable figure, he underlined.

Investment destination

Even though its fiscal space is still narrow, Somalia is really working hard to broaden it with reforms in revenue collection and overall economic growth, he stressed.

He said: "We feel now that 6 percent of debt would give us a lot of fiscal space that we need first to rely on ourselves."

The low debt situation is an opportunity for countries to grow because they can invest and spend on other priorities that rather than servicing debt and this also gives Somalia the opportunity to secure more investments in the future, Hosow added.

He said Somalia is a country with potential in terms of its natural resources and potential renewable energy, calling it a great investment destination.

"We want industrialisation to develop, we want to benefit from natural resources, oil and gas that Türkiye has been helping us discover," Hosow said, referring to landmark offshore exploration by Türkiye that began last year.

He said: "Somalia also has the longest coastline in Africa, we want to become a logistics hub that supplies many of the states and countries and the region."

Strong history of ties with Türkiye

Somalia and Türkiye developed their close friendship in 2011 after Turkish President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid a visit to the country – the first non-African leader to do so in over 20 years.

Türkiye has strong historical ties with Somalia on the principle of “win-win” relations, including more than 150 development aid projects carried out by the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency since 2011.

Türkiye also has its largest embassy in Africa in Mogadishu and has built its largest overseas military facility there to train the Somali National Army.