Somalia is a member of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO); which is one of the two Regional Patent Offices in Africa designated to uphold the values of safeguarding industrial property rights, dissemination of technical information, protection of literary and artistic property rights and providing Intellectual Property training programs.
Somalia is an insanely favored investment destination. However, the nation is facing the highest foreign labor invasion ever registered since independence. Therefore, its critical now for the patent rules and regulations to be enacted and enforced to shelter Somali hardworking service sector from the notoriously unfair international trade agreements In Africa.
Somalis despite lacking the basic elements of running successful business start-up within the country had cemented their legacy as one of the unique societies to create their own system of entrepreneurship wherever they go. There is an old saying that goes; wherever there is a Somali community there is innovation, creativity, openness and most importantly there is an entrepreneurial spirit. This is the same spirit that sustained Somalis and their families during the last thirty years of state fragmentation and civil unrest.
However, the energy and passion for business and commerce are in great danger specifically in the Somali market-driven economy run by the forces of demand and supply. This is because thousands of casual cheap laborers from the neighboring countries have flooded into the country doing exactly what locals could do. Other groups have started to import vegetables and fruits that Somali farmers use to dominate the market. As of recent, some Egyptian tradesmen have recently started to import fruits as common as oranges and bananas into the country, yet Somali domestic capacity could even export the produce after covering the local demand.
In addition, Yemeni economic refugees are now taking over the construction and decoration sector, and together with the Bangladeshi cheap and skilled labor they have totally replaced the local semi-skilled construction workers. This has eliminated a huge amount of local taxation from Somali revenue collection system because it’s evident that foreign workers do repatriate their profits back to their home countries without contributing effectively to the Somali economy and that ends up causing economic leakage/bleeding resulting from the capital flight syndrome.
The above precedent gives us a simple glimpse of how significant; patents, employment laws, company laws are to Somali subsistence economy. And in my opinion, it is paramount for our society to draw a clear line guided by the principle of “Somali first” agenda.
In October last year, the National Economic Council (NEC) during Mogadishu Tech Summit listed several subordinate challenges hindering Somalia’s private sector to flourish, turning a deaf ear to the actual catastrophe of economic invasion. In fact, the council had not recognized the international competition of cheap subsidized produce and foreign labor invasion as a serious threat that will end up jeopardizing the production possibility frontier (PPF) of the country.
Surprisingly, the federal government of Somalia specifically the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs doesn’t even have a clear statistical figure of the actual number of foreign workers operating in the country, their legal presence and whether or not they contribute to the national revenue collection or even who is responsible if they work contrary to the rules and regulations of the land.
Nevertheless, the recent endeavor of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA) provides enormous opportunities for the peasant African agriculture sectors to compete in the global value chain, it encourages factors like tax holidays, subsidizing farmers and SMEs, and creating incentives for the struggling African economies and most importantly a partial embargo on the lopsided over-seas trade agreements that hampered African countries and made their markets flooded with imported goods, posing a tremendous pressure on the domestic produce.
Hence, for Somalia to utilize this international trade game which is a double-edged sword needs us to revitalize our trade soil by breaking new grounds and initiating policies that can make us equal international trade partners, not serfs, a trade that is a win-win situation for all of us, a trade that will not keep Somalia as hostage and prisoner.
Having said that, it’s evident that the only way out is by designing contextually relevant patent rights that safeguard the rights of our men and women in the agriculture and service sectors who are the hidden heroes running our economy behind the shadows because they are simply unable to compete, they simply cannot compete with the global standards. And as a result, Africa which is the home of 9 out of the 15 fastest growing economies in the world is losing more than USD 5 billion with some large countries like the DRC importing more than 60 percent of all food that could be grown, packed and packaged locally by young people.
In concluding remarks, the reality on the ground gives us no choice but rather be so strict on protecting our subsistence economy from the Asian invasion and Arab brutality in conquering our service sector. Regionally as mentioned earlier, Somalia is one of the 19 member states of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), but surprisingly; the Harare Protocol on Patents and Designs, Banjul Protocol on Marks, and the Arusha Protocol for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants which are the fundamental pillars of this organization are not still active in Somalia due to the lack of effective local patent laws to guide the regional ones.
