Mogadishu Sees Building Boom as Improved Security Curbs al-Shabab Attacks
Key Takeaways
- •Mogadishu is undergoing rapid construction, including the 26-floor Dahab Tower with luxury flats, a mall, a gym and a mosque, which is due to open this year near the site of the 1993 Black Hawk downing.
- •Somalia's global diaspora sends remittances estimated by the World Bank at over $1 billion a year, and these funds finance much of Mogadishu's construction.
- •Since 2022, government forces backed by allied clan militias have conducted an offensive that pushed al-Shabab insurgents out of parts of central Somalia.
- •The International Crisis Group attributes the decline in attacks to practical measures including CCTV cameras, an electronic vehicle database used at checkpoints, and large deployments of plainclothes intelligence officers.
- •The durability of the security gains remains uncertain, as Somali forces take on growing responsibility following the African Union's handover from ATMIS to AUSSOM at the start of 2025.
Mogadishu's improved security is producing visible results, according to a report from The Economist highlighted by Marginal Revolution. For a city that has known mostly conflict since the collapse of Somalia's central government in 1991, cranes and concrete are a conspicuous barometer of change.
"Business is booming," says Gamal Hassan, Somalia's commerce minister. New buildings are going up at a frenetic pace, and the district around the airport has grown much denser, as satellite images of the city show. Dahab Tower, a 26-floor development combining luxury flats, a mall, a gym and a mosque, is due to open this year. It sits close to the spot where, in 1993, the bodies of two American soldiers were dragged through the streets after militiamen shot down a Black Hawk helicopter. Nearby is Beydan Coffee, a thriving pan-African chain founded by a Somali who returned from Sweden in the 2010s. Much of the city's construction has long been financed by Somalia's global diaspora, whose remittances, estimated by the World Bank at over $1 billion a year, remain a mainstay of the economy.
The backdrop makes the shift stark. Al-Shabab, which has fought to overthrow Somalia's federal government since the mid-2000s, has repeatedly struck the capital with car bombings, most lethally in October 2017, when a truck bomb killed more than 500 people in one of the deadliest attacks in modern African history. Since 2022, government forces backed by allied clan militias have also conducted an offensive that pushed the insurgents out of parts of central Somalia.
What explains the lull in attacks is less obvious. The government boasts that, in the words of a former intelligence officer, it has "completely closed the doors" on al-Shabab. Mr Mahmood of the International Crisis Group (ICG) credits "prosaic" measures: the spread of CCTV cameras and an electronic database that police equipped with iPads use to identify civilian cars at checkpoints. Plainclothes intelligence officers have also been deployed in large numbers. How durable the gains prove is an open question, not least because security responsibilities are increasingly falling to Somali forces after the African Union's long-running ATMIS mission handed over to its successor mission, AUSSOM, at the start of 2025.
More from The Economist: Mogadishu no longer deserves its deadly reputation. The Marginal Revolution post adds the author's broader observation that many dangerous places in the world are about to become much, much safer.
