Somalia is one of the world’s poorest countries having suffered from decades of acute political fragility, instability, violent conflict and lack of development. It is also ranked as the most corrupt country by Transparency International. Progress on the political and security fronts since 2012 has led to substantial increases in development aid, exemplified by the adoption of the Somali Compact in 2013. Total aid flows are ten times the level of government’s own resources, three times higher than any other country. Yet Somalia still receives less development aid per person than many other post-conflict countries.

General lessons for donors from this review include:

• The constraints imposed by continued insecurity.
• The value of consultation and local participation.
• The need to continually adapt approaches to the evolving context.
• The case for greater investment in monitoring and evaluation.
• The challenge of tackling corruption.
• The case for additional – and better prioritised – funding.
• The urgency of tackling standard aid effectiveness challenges.
• The success of some mechanisms developed for post-conflict situations.

This brief on Somalia is part of a report series from the Evaluation Department – Country Evaluation Briefs (CEBs) – collecting and summarising existing evaluation findings from selected Norwegian focus countries. The purpose is to make relevant, systematically collected and collated knowledge about these countries easily accessible for people that work with these countries and other interested readers. The CEBs were written by the Chr. Michelsen Institute in cooperation with Overseas Development Institute upon a commission by the Evaluation Department.

This briefing was first published by Norad.