Africa's poorest country, guarded 20 years ago, is now a pirate, poor and miserable
By 2017, there were 55 countries in Africa with a population of 12200 million, with a land area of 29.86 million square kilometers, but its GDP is only a few million dollars more than Germany's, so many people believe that Africa is the source of poverty due to deserts, droughts, and no sea exports. However, Somalia is the largest of the three regions, with more than 3,200 kilometers of coastline and an average GDP of just over $1,000 among African countries, making it still the poorest region in the world.
According to records, Somalia was a famous spice producing country 4,000 years ago, because it is located in the Gulf of Aden, it was occupied by ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, Phoenicia, Babylon, Indian and other ancient countries. Somalia in the 15th century, when it was at its peak, it had trade with the world's major maritime powers, not only dozens of countries in Europe and the Americas, but also in Asia (Ming Dynasty), India and Persia also opened regular shipping routes, is a veritable shipping hub.
After the Berlin Summit in the 19th century, European countries began to expand to Africa, Britain first annexed Ethiopia, and then annexed Somalia, even if France and Italy later sent troops to Somalia, they only got a small piece of territory of "Somaliland", after the end of World War II, Italy was controlled by "Somaliland", but in fact it was still ruled by Britain, until 1960, the two countries united and established the Somali Republic.
But Somalia's independence was only a "flash in the pan", because of the entanglement of various interests, which led to its internal strife, until 1991, it fell into "no-**ism" and became a pile of loose sand, since then, it has been "dominating the list", more than 3,200 kilometers of coastline was opened up at will, and European countries turned their attention to Somalia. In fact, most people are not clear about the problem of piracy in Somalia, and it is mainly a problem of European and American countries.
Not only Britain, Germany, France, but also American and Canadian fishing boats have come to Somalia, and they use the name of fishing boats to transport some harmful industrial waste here, and then use fishing nets to throw garbage into the sea, and then continue fishing. As a result, local fishermen formed the so-called Coast Guard to defend the waters, and gradually drove out European and American fishing boats, gradually developing to detain and claim compensation.
What European and American countries did not expect was that after those fishermen realized that they had used firearms as pirates and their income far exceeded the normal fishing income, none of them were willing to continue fishing, so that the largest port in the country, Bossaso, was not even as good as a small village. In just two decades, the original "Guard" has become an organization of pirates, and their area of operation has expanded from the Gulf of Aden to the Arabian Sea to the Indian Ocean.
There are now fishermen fishing off the coast of Somalia, but their most common fishing methods are surprisingly backward, with lines tens of metres long in their hands, and most of them do not even have a net or a small fishing boat. Fishermen who can afford to fish on a fishing boat basically use their last nets, and even on Eid al-Fitr, they leave the port one by one, which is why poor Somali fishermen say that they are "desperate".
Although the United States has included Somalia in the "travel ban", European and American tourists still flock to Somalia because Somalia is not only the most diverse ethnic group in Africa, but also has the lowest levels of infectious diseases such as HIV in Africa, and the prices in Somalia are not as high as in Ethiopia, and the seafood is much cheaper than in other parts of Africa, except for some necessary necessities, everything else is reasonable.
Somalia's ** is not high, mainly because seafood, vegetables and other things can't enter, which has pirate ingredients and pressure from European and American countries. Although Somalia is not suitable for tourism, the civilians here are friendly to the residents here, especially the women who are tired of war and war, and they want more guests to come and buy what they have worked so hard for for a day, but no one can buy it.