Development should be measured by services still functioning five years later—not equipment photographed on the day it was delivered.
WARYATV Editorial Board | waryatv@waryatv.com
Somaliland does not suffer only from inadequate investment. It also suffers from development projects that arrive with funding, equipment and publicity—but without the systems required to keep them working.
Solar installations, water pumps, medical equipment, digital platforms and imported machinery can all become expensive monuments to weak planning. The problem is not necessarily poor technology. It is the failure to finance maintenance, train technicians and secure spare parts.
Delivery is not the same as development
Governments, donors and contractors naturally celebrate completion: a ribbon is cut, equipment is handed over and photographs are distributed.
The more important questions come later. Who owns the asset? Which institution pays its operating costs? Where are replacement components obtained? How quickly can a local technician restore the service?
If these questions have no clear answers, the project was not completed. It was merely installed.
Every contract needs a maintenance economy
Public procurement should require bidders to provide lifecycle costs, local training, spare-parts arrangements, warranties and a plan for transferring technical knowledge.
A water system should create local pump technicians. A solar project should train electricians who can diagnose inverters and batteries. Hospital equipment should not be accepted without biomedical maintenance capacity.
Donors should also publish how much of each project’s budget reaches Somaliland firms, workers and training institutions. Local participation cannot mean only providing drivers, guards and office space while foreign contractors retain the valuable technical work.
Somaliland needs capability, not dependency
Maintenance is often treated as an administrative detail. It is actually a national economic strategy.
A skilled maintenance workforce keeps public services operating, reduces foreign-exchange spending and creates employment that survives after donor funding ends. It also gives Somaliland greater freedom to compare suppliers rather than remaining dependent on one vendor.
The government should require a maintainability assessment before approving major imported systems. Universities and technical institutes should receive anonymized information on equipment failures and skills shortages so that training reflects actual demand.
Somaliland should stop measuring development by the number of projects launched. The honest measure is how many remain functional, affordable and locally repairable years after the foreign experts have left.
