Thursday May 15, 2025
State-building is never easy, even in the best of times. It demands patience, compromise, and above all, a shared understanding among citizens of what government is, what it is not, and what it is meant to serve. In Somalia, however, pervasive lack of understanding of civics has made the task nearly impossible. After decades of conflict, fragmentation, and lawlessness, too many Somalis have been left without the basic civic foundations that any stable political order needs. Without a common understanding of governance, Somalia’s efforts to build a lawful, functioning state will continue to stumble, not because the Somali people are incapable of governing themselves, but because too many have never been given the tools to know what good governance actually requires.
For much of the population, the government is not seen as a framework of laws and services that serve all citizens equally. It is seen instead as a prize, a source of contracts, jobs, and opportunities for domination. This view is not born out of malice, but out of experience. Somalis have lived through too many governments that operated exactly this way. Yet without a common understanding that government exists to serve the public good, not to enrich the few or punish rivals, every institution becomes a battleground. Elections stop being about leadership and ideas; they become contests over spoils. Laws stop being seen as guarantees of fairness; they are treated as weapons to be seized and wielded.
In this vacuum, older forms of loyalty fill the void. Clan identity, which has been both a strength and a survival mechanism for Somalis over the centuries, becomes the lens through which politics is seen. Civic duty is swallowed by clan duty. A judge is not judged by whether he applies the law fairly, but by which clan he comes from. A minister is not trusted for his competence, but for the alliances he carries. Meritocracy disappears. Neutrality becomes impossible. Trust in national institutions fades because those institutions are no longer seen as belonging to the nation as a whole.
Political elites have learned to manipulate this civic weakness. Rather than build a culture of accountability, many exploit confusion and ignorance to hold onto power. Constitutional violations are disguised as clan grievances. Illegal power grabs are justified in the name of “national unity.” Every dispute becomes a crisis because there is no shared understanding of the rules of the game. When ordinary citizens cannot distinguish between lawful governance and personal ambition, politics collapses into endless confrontation.
Somalia also suffers from the absence of a common civic story, a shared sense of what the nation is supposed to be. Other countries, even after wars and crises, have managed to rebuild because their people still believed in a basic national idea. In Somalia, that glue is missing. The constitution, though formally adopted in 2012, is largely unknown and unenforced. History is fragmented, often contested. In its place, personal loyalty and short-term gain define public life.
Even among political leaders and civil servants, understanding of constitutional law and governance principles is shallow. Parliamentary procedures are routinely violated without embarrassment. Judicial independence is undermined without protest. Federalism, meant to be a careful balance between center and regions, is hollowed out without serious debate. In such an environment, the law itself becomes suspect, seen not as a protection of rights but as a tool of the powerful. Without widespread respect for legal restraint and due process, even the best-designed constitutions are little more than paper.
This deep civic ignorance also creates dangerous impatience. Many Somalis expect rapid change, immediate prosperity, and instant security. When those hopes are not met, frustration grows. Leaders are blamed, systems are abandoned, and citizens turn away from national government altogether. True state-building, however, takes decades. It requires steady, imperfect work over a long time. Without civic patience and understanding, every failure feeds disillusionment, and every new beginning is haunted by old disappointments.
The tragedy is that Somalia’s struggle is not simply about bad leaders or bad luck. It is about a people who have been denied the civic education and common story that make lawful governance possible. No constitution can survive if its people do not believe in it. No government can function if its citizens do not know what it means to govern fairly.
If Somalia is to have any chance of building a stable, just government, it must begin with a national project of civic renewal. Citizens must be taught what governments are supposed to do. They must understand what the constitution says and why it matters. They must learn that rights and duties belong to everyone, not just to one’s clan or faction. Above all, Somalis must come to believe that true leadership is service, not domination.
This is not an easy task. It will not be completed in a year, or even a decade. But there is no other way. Without civic education, no amount of foreign aid, no new constitution, no political agreement will save the country. State-building does not begin with laws or offices; it begins in the minds and hearts of citizens. Somalia must choose to build that foundation, or it will remain forever trapped between its past and its unrealized future.
The author is a Somali-American lawyer based in Nairobi, Kenya.