SOMALI: Amid the Chaos Business Thrives
The International Herald Tribune writes:
When a Coca-Cola bottling plant opened here two years ago, the 400-plus investors invited to finance the project were carefully chosen by clan. There were Abgal investors and Habar Gedir investors and representatives of other clans around Somalia as well. Each contributed a minimum of $300 to help start the United Bottling Company, Somalia’s only maker of Coca-Cola. The project was a deliberate effort to create a feeling of communal ownership for the factory in a place where clan-based conflict has long been the rule. Building a sparkling, $8.3 million facility in such a tumultuous capital was a bold business venture. The thinking was that Somalia had huge business potential and that long years of anarchy, which erupted after Somalia’s last government collapsed in 1991, would eventually give way to a mending of the country. But Somalia is a difficult place to read, and now the Coke brand faces a much-changed business environment, one fraught with both opportunity and peril. Islamic militias took over the capital in June and brought some stability to the city - so much that the Coke bottler predicts the company’s sky-high security costs will soon plummet.