Somalia does not have a working pharmaceutical regulatory authority and neither does it have recorded data on the status of healthcare in the country. No regulations concerning pharmaceuticals have been published recently or are easily available through online access for parties with interest. Much of the variability in the quality and range of health services available is due to Somalia’s unstable political situation. The three zonal Ministries of Health (Ministry of Health of the Transitional Federal Government, Ministry of Health and Labour of Somaliland, and the Ministry of Health of Puntland) operate with varying (and overall limited) levels of influence over domestic operations. Bilateral donors and international NGOs are the most significant contributors to the formal health care system, but aid is uncoordinated, without common long-term agendas.

Somalia is critical for the pharmaceutical trade because its duty-free conditions have made it a major import channel for the Horn of Africa (Kenya and Ethiopia). There are linkages between the pharmaceutical market in Ethiopia and Somalia, but little is known about the routes which are taken or the amount of goods that cross the border. Drug supply routes are the least investigated segment of the health system in Somalia although a study did find that most medicines in the central Bakaarha market in Mogadishu came from Pakistan and India.

Somalia has a MoH website: https://moh.gov.so/en/ through which it shares information pertaining to the pharmaceutical activities happening in the country. The site has no link to IGAD’s portal, a community to which it is part. However, as part of IGAD, the country does get benefits from the medicine regulation harmonization from the medicine regulation policies that the community has put in place.