Home / Research Article / Research Article
Back
Research Article Open access

Worlding Mogadishu: ‘New cities’ and material modes of urban speculation

Abstract

Over the past 15 years, Mogadishu – the capital city of Somalia – has undergone rapid transfor- mation. As the state was rebuilt following its collapse in the 1990s, the city became a site of dia- spora return and investment. In this paper we explore the role of telecommunications companies in the development of urban land in relation to these contemporary, contested processes. We focus on Hormuud Telecommunications Company and its affiliated companies involved in financ- ing, construction, technical training, electricity provision and transnational money transfer. We show that telecommunication companies (telecoms), having expanded far beyond traditional ambits, are playing a central role in urban speculation in Mogadishu, aimed at both global and local audiences. As speculators, telecoms are not only involved in generating imaginaries for the future of the city, but take material and laborious steps to produce them. This is most apparent, we argue, in Darul Salaam, the new city being developed for the diaspora and local elites on the periphery of Mogadishu. Overall, we argue that telecoms engage in the performative work of both market-making and world-making, enrolling diaspora capital towards bold urban imaginaries in ways that are distinct from other economic sectors. While we focus on Somalia and its unique context, telecoms across Africa are growing in wealth and scope, necessitating empirical and conceptual engagement with their role in urban processes.

Keywords

Mogadishu new cities speculation telecommunications worlding

References (70)

  1. AI (2022) Legal pluralism, obscure reforms and adjudication of land conflicts in Hargeisa, Somaliland. Land Use Policy 120: 106286
  2. AI (2023) Post-conflict statecraft, land governance and exclusion in Hargeisa, Somaliland. Environment and Urbanization 35(2): 508–526. Van Noorloos F and
  3. AM (2024) The political economy of connectivity in the Somali Horn of Africa. International Affairs 100(4): 1511–1530. Iazzolino G and
  4. Amin A (2004) Regulating economic globalization. Transactions of the Institute of
  5. Amoore L (2019) Doubt and the algorithm: On Geographers 29(2): 217–233. the partial accounts of machine learning. Theory Culture & Society 36(6): 147–169
  6. Anyumba G (1996) Kisumu Town: History of the Built Form, Planning and Environment: 1890- 1990. Delft University Press. Bakonyi J, Chonka P and
  7. Beeckmans L (2019) Mediating (in)visibility and publicity in an African church in Ghent: Religious place-making and solidarity in the European city. In: Bialasiewicz L and Gentile V (eds) Spaces of Tolerance: Changing Geographies and Philosophies of Religion in Today’s Europe. Routledge, pp.180–196
  8. Benabdallah L (2024) Africa–Asia: A tale of worldmaking between alterity and contestation. African Affairs 123(491): 223–241. Berrisford S, Cirolia LR and
  9. Bronk R (2019) Uncertain futures: imaginaries, narratives, and calculative technologies
  10. Callon M (2007) What does it mean to say that economics is performative? In: MacKenzie DA, Muniesa F and Siu L (eds) Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton University Press, pp.311– 357
  11. Cardoso R (2016) The circuitries of spectral urbanism: Looking underneath fantasies in Luanda’s new centralities. Urbanisation 1(2): 95–113. Cardoso R, Chen J and
  12. Cirolia L (2023) Ring roads, revived plans, & plotted practice: The multiple makings of Nairobi’s urban periphery. Habitat International 142: 102932
  13. Croese S (2017) State-led housing delivery as an instrument of developmental patrimonialism: The case of post-war Angola. African Affairs 116(462): 80–100
  14. Croese S (2018) Global urban policymaking in Africa: A view from Angola through the redevelopment of the Bay of Luanda. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 42(2): 198–209. Elmi MA and
  15. Ernstson H (2023) Blocos urbanism: Capitalism and modularity in the making of contemporary Luanda. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 47(5): 809–832. Chonka P, Sahgal G and
  16. Es M (2020) Material politics facing post-truth: Speculation, infrastructure, and ecology in Turkey. Antipode 52(6): 1731–1750
  17. Farlane C (2021) Fragments of the City: Making and Remaking Urban Worlds. University of
  18. FB (2019) ICTs as Juju: African inspiration for understanding the compositeness of being human through digital technologies. Journal of African Media Studies 11(3): 279–291. Nyamnjoh H,
  19. Feldman R (2007) Somalia: Amidst the rubble, a vibrant telecommunications infrastructure. Review of African Political Economy 34(113): 565–572
  20. Getachew A (2019) Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of
  21. Gillespie T (2020) The real estate frontier. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 44(4): 599–616
  22. Glotten S (2012) Ordinary intersections: Speculations on difference, justice, and utopia in black queer life. Transforming Anthropology 20(1): 45–66
  23. Goldman M (2010) Speculative urbanism and the making of the next world city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35(3): 555–581
  24. Goodfellow T (2020) Finance, infrastructure and urban capital: The political economy of African ‘gap-filling’. Review of African Political Economy 47(164): 256–274. Hagmann T, Mohamed A, Ali A, et al. (2022) Commodified cities: Urbanisation and public goods in Somalia. Report, Rift Valley Institute. Hagmann T and Stepputat F (eds) (2023) Trade Makes States: Governing the Greater Somali Economy. Hurst Publishers. Halpern O and
  25. Gregor J (2014) Sentimentality or speculation? Diaspora investment, crisis economies and urban transformation. Geoforum 56: 172–181
  26. Hecht G (2018) Interscalar vehicles for an African Anthropocene: On waste, temporality, and violence. Cultural Anthropology 33(1): 109–141
  27. Hoyng R (2024) The price of speculation: Fintech risk regimes in Hong Kong. Cultural Studies 38(2): 219–244. Hoyng R and
  28. Huchzermeyer M (2007) Tenement city: The emergence of multi-storey districts through large-scale private landlordism in Nairobi. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31(4): 714–732
  29. Kilfoil C (2011) The Cross-Border Money Transfer Experience: Why Taxis and Buses Are Still Preferred to Banks. Report,
  30. Kloosterboer M (2018) Africa’s new cities: The contested future of urbanisation. Urban Studies 55(6): 1223–1241. Wasuge M, Barnes C and Kiepe T (eds) (2017) Land Matters in Mogadishu: Settlement, Ownership and Displacement in a Contested City. Rift Valley Institute (RVI) and Mogadishu: Heritage Institute of Policy Studies (HIPS). https://riftvalley.net/wp-content/ uploads/2018/06/Land-Matters-in-Mogadishu -RVI-Rift-Valley-Forum-and-HIPS-2017.pdf (accessed 5
  31. Letema S (2021) Influence of public policy planning on peri-urban 21 land speculation in (Greater) Eastern Bypass in Nairobi Metropolitan. Land Use Policy 107: 105515. Kok S and
  32. LG (2014) Conflict and commensuration: Contested market making in India’s private real estate development sector. In: Shatkin G (ed.) Contesting the Indian City: Global Visions and the Politics of the Local. Wiley Blackwell, pp. 65–90
  33. Liberatore G (2018) Forging a ‘good diaspora’: Political mobilization among Somalis in the UK. Development and Change 49(1): 146–169
  34. Lindley A (2009) Between ‘dirty money’ and ‘development capital’: Somali money transfer infrastructure under global scrutiny. African Affairs 108(433): 519–539
  35. LR (2014) (W)Escaping the challenges of the city: A critique of Cape Town’s proposed satellite town. Urban Forum 25(3): 295–312. Cirolia LR, Hall S and
  36. LR (2022) Precarity, permits, and prayers: ‘Working practices’ of Congolese asylum-seeking women in Cape Town. Africa Spectrum 57(1): 30–49
  37. MA (2025) The ambiguity, opaqueness and consequences of FATF’s remittance regulatory strategies: The case studies of Somalia and Nigeria. Journal of Economic Criminology 8: 100156
  38. Mackenzie D (2006) Is economics performative? Option theory and the construction of derivatives markets. Journal of the History of Economic Thought 28(1): 29–55. Maimbo SM (ed.) (2006) Remittances and Economic Development in Somalia: An Overview. Social Development Papers: Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction, Paper 38. The World Bank. Maina M and
  39. Mavhunga C (2017) What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean From Africa?The MIT Press. Mbembe A and
  40. Menon S (2025) Dubai diasporas, transnational remittances and intimate infrastructures of finance in India. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 57(6): 719–738
  41. Mercer C (2024) The Suburban Frontier: Middle- Class Construction in Dar es Salaam. University of California Press. Meth P, Charlton S, Goodfellow T, et al. (2024) Living the Urban Periphery: Infrastructure, Everyday Life and Economic Change in
  42. Mitchell T (2008) Rethinking economy. Geoforum 39(3): 1116–1121
  43. Miyazaki H (2006) Economy of dreams: Hope in global capitalism and its critiques. Cultural Anthropology 21(2): 147–172
  44. Mohamed S (2021) Space, memory and the politics of reconstruction: Conflict-related property disputes in Mogadishu, Somalia. Doctoral Dissertation, University of
  45. Mohamud M (2014) Diaspora return to Somalia. Perceptions and implications. heritage institute for policy studies. Policy Brief 6: 2014
  46. Ngwenyama O (2020) Examining the use of electronic money and technology by the diaspora in international remittance system: A case of Somali remittances from Canada. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries 86(5): e12138
  47. Norman J (2024) Platform kinship and the reshaping of political order in the Somali territories. International Affairs 100(4): 1431–1450
  48. Nurhussein S (2008) Global networks, fragmentation, and the rise of telecommunications in stateless Somalia. Doctoral Dissertation, University of
  49. Nuttall S (2004) Writing the world from an African metropolis. Public Culture 16(3): 347–372
  50. Nyamnjoh H (2022) Remittance micro-worlds and migrant infrastructure: Circulations, disruptions, and the movement of money. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 47(1): 63–76
  51. Nzonde P (2018) Migrant remittances and socioeconomic status of recipient households in the DRC: Case of Congolese migrants in the22 Western Cape in South Africa. Masters Dissertation, University of
  52. Ong A (2011) Hyperbuilding: Spectacle, speculation, and the hyperspace of sovereignty. In: Roy A and Ong A (eds) Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global. Wiley, pp.205–226
  53. Otsuki K (2019) Urban land grabs in Africa? Built Environment 44(4): 389–396
  54. Ouma S (2014) Situating global finance in the land rush debate: A critical review. Geoforum 57: 162–166
  55. Palmer I (2018) Land-based financing in sub-Saharan African cities. Environment and Urbanization 30(1): 35–52. Bryld E, Kamau C and
  56. Passas N (2006) Demystifying Hawala: A look into its social organization and mechanics. Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 7(sup1): 46–62
  57. PL (2017) Building new capital cities in Africa: Lessons for new satellite towns in developing countries. African Studies 76(4): 546–565
  58. Pollio A (2026) Silicon Elsewhere: Nairobi, Global China, and the Promise of Techno-Capital. University of
  59. Reith G (2013) Techno economic systems and excessive consumption: A political economy of ’pathological’ gambling. British Journal of Sociology 64(4): 717–738
  60. Rogers R (2017) Rethinking migration in the digital age: Transglocalization and the Somali diaspora. Global Networks 17(1): 23–46. Langhan S and
  61. Sawyer L (2014) Piecemeal urbanisation at the peripheries of Lagos. African Studies 73(2): 271–289
  62. Seaver N (2017) Algorithms as culture: Some tactics for the ethnography of algorithmic systems. Big Data & Society 4(2): 205395171773810
  63. Simone A (2001) On the worlding of African cities. African Studies Review 44(2): 15–41
  64. Simone A (2016) Passing things along: (In)completing infrastructure. New Diversities 17(2): 151–162
  65. Simone A (2021) Ritornello: ‘‘People as infrastructure’’. Urban Geography 42(9): 1341-1348
  66. Sinigallia D (2013) Gatekeepers in Mogadishu. Report, 31 January. The Somalia Cash Consortium.20
  67. SJ (2014) Global coloniality and the challenges of creating African futures. The Strategic Review for Southern Africa 36(2): 181–202
  68. Sjol J (2022) Contingency and mysticism from economics to finance: Knight, Ayache, DeLillo. Theory Culture & Society 39(1): 61–80. Steel G, Van Noorloos F and
  69. Steel G (2019) Transnational migrants, land and new investment hubs in African cities. Built Environment 44(4): 477–492. Kinuthia H, Majale C and
  70. Stremlau N (2023) War, peace, and the circulation of mobile money across the Somali territories. In: Hagmann T and Stepputat F (eds) Trade Makes States: Governing the Greater Somali Economy. Hurst Publishers, pp. 57–70.