There are few business areas in which a failed state might hope to challenge the developed world, but in recent years Somali livestock exports to the Middle East have overtaken those from Australia.
While Australia exports about 2m sheep a year to the Middle East, Somalia and its breakaway territory of Somaliland broke all records last year when they together exported about 3m sheep.
Including goats, cattle and camels, total livestock exports from the civil war afflicted territories rose to 4.8m in what is the world's largest on-the-hoof movement in the live animal trade.
"There's no single time that they ever exported such large numbers before," says Ernest Njoroge, livestock expert at the EU's Somalia Unit. "If the ports in Berbera, Bosaso and Mogadishu become very, very efficient, then that will even increase."
The Gulf's appetite for Somali livestock is down to three factors. Since the oil boom of the 1970s, Saudi Arabia and other states in the region have been able to afford a meat-heavy diet. Somali goat is also said to be sweeter and less fatty than goat from Australia. But the most important factor, and one that sends orders, and prices, rocketing, is the season when Muslim countries celebrate Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice.
Every family is meant to slaughter a sheep in memory of the prophet Abraham, and every one of the 3m pilgrims who make the annual Hajj to Mecca before the festival is also supposed to slaughter an animal, while the Hajj itself creates extra mouths to feed in Saudi Arabia throughout their stay. As a result, there is big demand for livestock across the region.
The latest export figures from the UN-backed Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia show Berbera and Bosaso alone exported 2,069,007 head in the seven months to July, figures that do not include the two-month run-up to Eid al-Adha and Hajj in mid-October.
Meanwhile, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences says that the country's A$200m (£116m) export trade in live sheep, 99 per cent of which heads to the Middle East, has been declining by 10 per cent a year since 2006 "because of increasing competition in export markets from African and eastern European sheep exports".
The change in fortunes is partly down to growing stability in the region as it emerges from more than two decades of civil war. As a result, the revival of port operations as well as improved health standards, all of which collapsed during the war, have helped boost trade and secured the repeal of a series of import bans triggered by diseased livestock.
A nine-year health ban on Somali livestock imposed in 2000 by Saudi Arabia, the biggest buyer, not only brought the sector close to standstill and led to the collapse of domestic livestock prices, it drove down the currency. Camel exports from Berbera fell to 3,473 a year after the ban, but had rebounded to 107,281 by 2011.
Mohamed Bihi Yonis, Somaliland foreign minister, says: "Livestock is extremely important: it's one of our lifelines and we are trying to see how we can increase the livestock that goes to Saudi Arabia. They say they need many millions more." He adds that managers of a Saudi food company visited recently to try to boost imports closer to the 10m mark.
"A lot of Ethiopian livestock is also coming through Berbera. It's a very big market for us and it's time for us to increase the capacity of Berbera port," says Mr Yonis, who hopes planned investments will deliver a terminal dedicated to livestock for export to the Middle East.
Established properly, such a terminal has the potential to transform the lives of some of the region's poorest nomads. Nearly two-thirds of them depend on livestock, generating 40 per cent of GDP and 80 per cent of foreign currency earnings.
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FOLLOW USΑκολουθήστε τη σελίδα του Euro2day.gr στο LinkedinSheep and goats go for up to $200 in the Gulf, while camels can sell for $1,200, more than double Somali prices. On average, 20 families are involved in the chain from production to export, including brokers, transporters and feeders. Mr Njoroge says: "While the profit margins for both the live animal and meat trade are low per animal, traders make profit on volume rather than per animal, with small-scale traders making up to $10,000 in a year."
Rising prices are already helping African exporters, he says, but much more value could be extracted by developing local abattoirs and refrigeration plants for meat to be exported by air, creating better cuts and allowing separate sales of hides and offal, which together can add 10 per cent to the value and, more importantly, employ far more Somalis.
Recent efforts to spruce up the sector include the donor-funded IGAD Sheikh Technical Veterinary School and Reference Centre and two quarantine centres that certify livestock safe for export. But progress will not be easy.
"The buyers remain in the driving seat," says Paul Crook of the International Labour Organization. "There are very few middlemen who are able to control vast areas of production."
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