The $852 Million Question

The UN and its partners just put out the number for this year: $852 million needed to reach 2.4 million people in Somalia facing drought and displacement. It is a real ask for a real crisis, and I do not doubt the need. But every year around this time I sit with the same discomfort I carried as Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management.

The number tells you how much outside money is missing. It never tells you how much local capacity was already there and unfunded. In North East State, elders knew which families had lost their herds before any assessment team arrived. Clan networks were already redistributing water, food, remittances, long before an appeal went out. That system does not show up in a funding gap because donors are not built to fund it.

We keep asking the world to close the gap instead of asking why the gap reopens every single year. A response plan that starts and ends with international financing will always be one bad rainy season away from crisis. One that starts with what our own people already do for each other might actually close it for good.

I am not against the $852 million. I am against building nothing else while we wait for it.