A Somali City Thrives Without Aid Stephen Buckley. Then, in 1991, Somalia's government fell. The country tumbled into an ongoing civil war. And Somalis were left to fend for themselves. A businessman has established a citywide telephone system.
Teachers work for no salary.
A volunteer police force has been created. Boosaaso's council of Muslim elders effectively acts as the town's judiciary. Today Boosaaso, without a formal government, has become a boom town, with one of Somalia's busiest ports, a burgeoning population and the kind a daily stability envied by much of this deeply troubled East African country. Boosaaso's story is increasingly common throughout sub-Saharan Africa, where many communities, abandoned by governments that either dissolved or hopelessly dysfunctional, have had to forge their own paths to survival. In Liberia, paralyzed by six years of civil war, rural residents have banded together to improve food-growing techniques, working on each other's farms to make planting and harvesting more efficient.