Ex-refugee starts Somalia’s first dairy
Venture draws on fact that powdered milk is imported in a country where cattle abound
Starting a dairy in Mogadishu was not an obvious choice: bombs go off with startling regularity, electricity is patchy and expensive and most Somalis don’t even drink fresh cow’s milk.
But Abdul Kadir Mohammad Salad, 40, who spent most of his life as a refugee in Britain where he worked for a dairy, is convinced the business can work in his home country, where cattle abound yet tonnes of powdered milk are imported every year.
“It is very difficult to invest in a hostile environment like Somalia in the first place and secondly, people here know very little about the dairy business,” Salad said at his small factory.
Salad left his country shortly after the fall of president Siad Barre’s military regime in 1991, which plunged Somalia into civil war. He worked as a taxi driver before getting a job at a dairy in Leicester.
Surprised by the amount of cattle in the country, and the fact that aside from a few farmers selling raw, untreated milk, there was no proper factory treating the product, he and two colleagues decided to set up their own, called Irman Dairy, last year.
“Livestock is one of the economic resources of Somalia ... but tonnes of powdered milk are imported every year while our resources are wasted here,” said Salad.
Located in southern Mogadishu, Irman has to contend with the constant security challenges in the capital, which affects both production and distribution.
The city often sees car and suicide bombings by Al Qaidalinked Al Shabab militants.
Sometimes, the company’s small distribution van, brightly painted with a cow’s image on the side, returns without having delivered anything, due to road closures when there is an attack or security concerns.
“There are days when we don’t start the factory because of the security situation in town, this affects our business since we have staff and need to pay their salaries and other administration costs,” said Salad.
“The production capacity of our factory is 10,000 litres per day, but we can only produce 2,000 litres a day currently because of constraints, including the lack of a market,” he said.
High energy costs
The factory’s owners have on several occasions considered throwing in the towel, especially because of the high cost of electricity.
However, this problem was solved when the company received a donation of a solar energy system under a US-funded project to encourage entrepreneurship.
“We are very lucky that we got the solar system to run the factory now, otherwise we could have closed it down because energy is big issue here,” said Salad.
Irman distributes to various supermarkets in the city, selling each 500-millilitre sachet of milk for one dollar.