Thousands of angry Somalis rioted Monday over rising food prices and the collapse of the nation’s currency, culminating in clashes with government troops and armed shopkeepers that killed at least five protesters, witnesses and officials said.
Shops and markets throughout Mogadishu quickly shut their doors as protesters, including many women and children, stoned storefronts and chanted slogans accusing traders of cheating them.
“I’ve never demonstrated before, but I’m not ashamed, because if you can’t eat, you will do whatever you can,” said Abdullahi Mohammed, 57, of Mogadishu. “Before I was eating three times a day, but now sometimes it’s not even once.”
Somalia’s beleaguered population is coping with a civil war that began with the collapse of the government in 1991. But recently, the nation’s food industry, which previously thrived thanks to private traders, has been grappling with soaring inflation, spurred by an explosion of counterfeit currency over the past year and the global spike in food prices. Somalia imports at least 60 percent of its grain, and its local crops this year were devastated by a cycle of drought and flooding.
As a result, prices for rice, maize, sorghum and other cereals are up 100 percent to 400 percent over the past year. At the same time, the nation’s currency, the shilling, has lost half its value against the U.S. dollar over the past year.
Somalia joins a growing list of countries where rising food prices have led to violence, including Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Egypt.
Monday’s riots followed a smaller outbreak in the Somali capital last month.
In recent days, unrest returned when shop owners, who had been pressuring customers to pay in dollars, said they no longer would accept old, worn-out shillings.
Consumers blame traders for exploiting the current crisis, but retailers insist their own suppliers will no longer accept Somalia’s older bills, some of which date to before 1991.
“I can’t accept the old money because I can’t use it to buy products again from my wholesalers,” said Obey Mahad, who runs a food shop in the capital.
Traders fault the government for failing to address the violence and lawlessness that have driven hundreds of importers to flee the country, and for doing nothing to stop the printing of fake currency. Critics say government officials might even be linked to the counterfeiting rings.
The UN-recognized transitional government barely is holding on to power, supported by thousands of Ethiopian troops who in 2006 helped it topple an Islamic regime that controlled Mogadishu.
Even before the food and currency crises, aid groups had issued stark warnings about an impending humanitarian catastrophe in Somalia. About 2.6 million Somalis, more than one-quarter of the population, are in need of food aid, up 40 percent since January, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.