Have you ever heard Marshall Plan? What about the rise of China as an economic and technological giant? What about Japanese progress after the 2nd World War? All these countries had benefitted from foreign investments and expertise.
“The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. It was enacted in 1948 and provided more than $15 billion to help finance rebuilding efforts on the continent. The brainchild of U.S. Secretary of State George C Marshall”.
Democracies are like-minded people with common interest aligned to their governance. That is why they have confidence in investing in each other’s country. The key here is political stability. China is a different case, attracting Western investment because of its cheap, huge labor force, and automatically receiving transfer of Western technology and know-how, while still maintaining its communist regime status. The result is now stiff competition from China as the 2nd world economic power. Japan had been devastated by US retaliation after Pearl Harbor attack during the 2nd WW, suffering nuclear blasts in the towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to its Armistice, an experience that never have to be repeated anywhere in the world. US had moral obligations to rebuild Japan. In my younger years I remember any manifactured item from Japan was looked down and 2nd rated. Now they talk about fine Japanese engineering.
But the purpose of writing this piece is to shed some light on the need to train future Somali workers for the coming investments in petroleum industries, mineral exploration and exploitation, fishery, meat processing plants and farming. Training Somali personnel must be an important component of any Foreign contracts in the future. Otherwise you risk importing labor force because your population is unskilled. How would you create jobs for people if you don’t prepare workers? How about vocational schools to take greater part of the burden in preparing Somali future workers? Can you dream of Somalia’s industrialization without native-born labour force? We must learn from the mistakes of the Arab Gulf States.
