Mapping ICTs in Somalia: Policies, Players, and Practices

This report offers a review of the policies and players that impact media and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) policies and practices in Somalia. The research, supplemented with interviews with senior policy advisors on ICTs, civil society organizations, journalists’ unions, and the private sector, suggests that the Somali Federal Government faces significant hurdles in constructing a national media policy. These can be reduced to the following four key challenges: 1) A weak central government; 2) A geographically and politically fragmented media environment; 3) A strong private telecommunications sector that benefits from a lack of regulation; 4) A preference by many actors for the traditional xeer and sharia law systems, rather than a formalized ICT regulatory environment. Disciplines Communication Technology and New Media | Critical and Cultural Studies | International and Intercultural Communication Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/africaictresearch/1 MAPPING ICTS IN SOMALIA: POLICIES, PLAYERS, AND PRACTICES CGCS Occasional Paper Series on ICTs, State-building, and Peacebuilding in Africa Number One June 2014 Mapping ICTs in Somalia: Policies, Players, and Practices