Environmental and Population Profile

ENVIRONMENT
Somalia known to have the longest coastland on its mainland within the Horn of Africa is located in Eastern Africa bordering the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean east of Ethiopia. It is bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Kenya on its Southwest, and Yemen on its north. Its capital is Mogadishu.
Hot conditions are year round in this desert country along with periodic monsoon winds and irregular rainfall. The monsoons happen in different regions: the northeast monsoon occurs between the months December to February and the southwest monsoons also occur between the months of May to October. Somalia weather differs with the geographical location of different regions. The places located on the higher altitude has a different weather conditions. These places are not as dry and hot as the places located on a lower altitude. Even though it gets very hot in this desert like country its weather condition states that there are two rainy seasons. The first one occurs in between the months of April to June called Gu and the second occurs between the month of October and November known as Dayr.
The economic activity carried on in Somalia is influenced by its weather condition. Mainly Agriculture is carried out in the areas where weather conditions are suitable like the south and areas in the North West help grow products such as bananas sorghum, coconuts, sugarcane, mangoes, sesame seeds, cattle, sheep, goats and fish. According to (indexmundi.com) and (Wikipedia.org) Somalia is a semi-arid country with about 1.64% arable land. The permanent crops grown is about 0.04%. The arable lands are cultivated for crops like wheat, maize and rice that are replanted each harvest. Permanent crops like citrus, coffee and rubber that are not replanted after each harvest includes land under flowering shrubs, fruit trees. About 14% of the population are engaged with farming.
The natural resources which are of very much of commercial importance to Somalia are mainly uranium and largely unexploited reserves of iron ore, tin, gypsum, bauxite, copper, salt, natural gas as well as oil reserves. These all list the mineral, petroleum and hydropower.
Large percentage of people’s illness in poor countries is directly linked to the pollution of their natural environment and Somali is by no means an exception. There are mostly activities held in that country that result in giving bad air to the country messing up its pollution. Deforestation occurs for the result of charcoal. The production of charcoal provides amount of employment in the rural areas which allows a quick return on investment. According to (banadir.com) it was said that during the last several years a new type of business was introduced which was cutting down trees to produce charcoal to export to Gulf States. There is said to also be illegal hazardous waste dumping in Somalia as well. With wars always occurring this country is known to be the world’s most attractive Illegal Hazardous Waste Dumping site. The dumping in question aren’t done by the people but supposedly by most European companies that go into their land to bring up businesses, taking advantage of the country’s political situation which is lacking a central government