Since the collapse of the Somali state in the 1990s, the country's private sector has played a particularly prominent role in service delivery, flourishing in the cracks left by the absence of a central government. In this space of the ungoverned economy, those providing essential utilities — such as healthcare — were assumed by businesses and economic cartels, which have reaped immense profits in turn amid the vacuum. However, in the years since, as the state-building process has gradually attempted to deliver or centralise such services, the incestuous relationships between business cartels and rent-seeking politicians have persisted. And in the meantime, the fractured and uneven nature of healthcare providers in Somalia continues to pose severe dangers to the population.
For decades, much of Northern Kenya has wrestled with cyclical violence rooted in pastoralist competition over livestock and grazing land. But what was once culturally regulated pastoralist raiding has gradually devolved into a militarised, profit-driven enterprise. Intersecting with both food security and climate change, banditry and cattle rustling are intensifying, with an August 2024 report by the National Crime Research Centre documenting a sharp rise in the past year, resulting in over 300 fatalities and many thousands more displaced or impoverished. The government's attempts to stifle the violence have further struggled in the face of Kenya's cost-of-living crisis, as well as the participation of corrupt, vested political interests in Nairobi.
On 9 February, during a press briefing in Addis, the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva called on Ethiopia to unite behind the government's economic reform agenda. Buoyed by the progress made by Addis, she said that the "reform Ethiopia has embraced is tough and takes time, but it will yield tremendous results." So far, these reforms– including the rapid liberalisation of the economy– have caused significant financial reverberations amid a period of widespread internal conflicts and rapid state contraction.