The Role of Business in Maintaining Peace in Somaliland

Somaliland has been peaceful for the last two decades, though this peace remains fragile. Analysts have accredited Somaliland’s relative stability to its bottom-up peacebuilding approach. Politicians, elders, business people and religious leaders complement each other to restore and maintain peace in Somaliland’s hybrid governance system. While these actors constantly contest influence and resources, when peace is threatened they have held each other into account, assisted by civil society and the media. In this brief, we ask what the role of local and foreign private sector actors is in maintaining peace and stability in Somaliland. We argue that foreign private actors are important to attract capital, skills and knowledge, and could boost the local economy. They could also assist in improving the state’s autonomy from domestic business elites. At the same time, considering the political culture and weak institutional capacity in Somaliland, foreign actors may threaten the peace by affecting the delicate power balance between local actors and by introducing transnational interests.