Somalia’s Kismayo women earn subsistence income selling acacia seeds for drought fodder

‘We sell what we collect’: In Kismayo, displaced women turn acacia seeds into a lifeline

KISMAYO, Somalia — Before sunrise on the outskirts of this southern port city, groups of women shoulder sacks and long sticks and set out from the internal displacement camps. They walk together into the scrub outside Kismayo, toward stands of acacia trees where, with a shake and a thud, their day’s earnings fall to the ground.

Their harvest — tiny, brown acacia seeds, locally known as abqo — has become a fragile but vital income stream. Sold as animal feed to traders serving pastoralists, abqo is in demand during dry seasons. For more than 100 displaced women in Kismayo, collecting and selling the seeds is one of the few viable ways to pay for food, water and school fees as humanitarian aid dwindles.

“Sometimes I earn three dollars, sometimes four,” said Abdiyo Hassan Ali, 55, a mother of eight who fled drought in 2022 after her family lost 80 goats and 15 cattle. “From that money, I take one and a half or two dollars to the shop where we get our supplies and buy food. The rest goes on buying firewood and water. That is how I manage.”

Ali now lives in Nasrudin displacement camp after leaving Biyole village, about 45 kilometers from Kismayo. She spends up to six hours a day walking to and from acacia stands, then carries her haul to a small market beside the city’s livestock holding ground. There, traders buy the seeds for resale to herders in the hinterland, part of a longstanding rural trade that has surged in importance for displaced families.

“There is a whole market just for acacia seeds,” Ali said. “People sell according to their luck. Those affected by drought buy from us and take the seeds back to the rural areas. A milk tin of acacia seeds sells for one dollar fifty. If it doesn’t sell, I reduce it to one dollar twenty-five.”

In that market, dozens of women sit in tight rows beneath the noon glare, waiting for buyers to come through. The seeds are measured out in recycled containers — milk tins now turned into currency. Prices rise and fall with supply and the severity of dry spells, and the rhythm of the trade has become as seasonal as the trees themselves.

Ali began selling abqo three months ago after a stretch of hunger and missed school days for her children. The modest but steadier income has allowed her to restore routines that drought swept away. She saves weekly for the $20 in school fees and has enrolled four children in primary school, including two girls under 10. Setting aside about $5 each week has also rebuilt her standing with local shopkeepers, who now let her buy food on credit when sales are slow.

Getting the seeds is painstaking. Acacia trees are tall and thorny, and the work requires cooperation and care. “We carry long sticks and shake the tree,” Ali said. “Two people shake it, the abqo seeds fall, then we collect them and put them into sacks. This is the best season for acacia seeds. We are women and there are no men with us but God has protected us. We see nothing except monkeys.”

The monkeys are more than a curiosity; they are competitors. Packs regularly raid the grounds, snatching at water jugs and scattering piles of freshly gathered seed. The women travel in groups for safety on the long walks through sparsely populated scrub, and to help one another shake branches and watch for trouble — whether human or animal.

For 45-year-old Fadumo Abdulle Hassan, the trade has been a rescue. She supports three children on her own after separating from her husband and moved to Nasrudin camp when a small business making homemade ice cream failed. “If the ice cream you make today doesn’t sell by evening, it melts,” she said. “That made me leave the idea. But for the acacia seeds, if they don’t sell today, they won’t spoil, and you can try to sell them again tomorrow.”

Hassan walks more than 20 kilometers into the bush and often returns balancing two sacks on her head. The pay varies, but the logic of the work feels dependable. “Usually, we earn three dollars or three and a half,” she said. “We sell whatever we collect. We eat what God has written for us. If we get more, we eat more. If we get less, we buy food with what we have.”

Abqo has long been a staple stopgap for pastoralist communities, mixed into feed when pasture thins. What is new in Kismayo is how central the seed has become to displaced women’s survival. Inside the camps, food aid has slackened; outside them, the consequences of back-to-back dry seasons and lost herds are measured in the miles walked and the tins sold.

The market near the livestock yard has evolved into a meeting point, economy and support system rolled into one. Women swap news and strategies, share water and space in the shade, and sometimes pool their stock to make a better offer to a single buyer. The work is hard and the margins slim, but control — deciding when to walk, when to sell, how to stretch earnings — matters.

Even at its peak, the trade remains precarious. Acacia yields dip in some seasons; prices weaken when supply swells. Heat bears down. Yet for Ali, Hassan and scores of others, the seed offers both a livelihood and a measure of dignity after displacement. It pays for small essentials — and for aspirations that withstood drought.

“I have enrolled four of my children in school,” Ali said, describing the careful sums she keeps each week. The math is simple: a few tins sold at $1.50 or $1.25 can become rice and oil today, plus a contribution toward next week’s school bill. A good day’s take might stretch to a jerrycan of water or a bundle of firewood. On lean days, trusted shopkeepers extend credit, a quiet acknowledgment that the harvest does not always match the need.

Across the women’s rows, the soundscape repeats: the rattle of seed in metal tins, bargaining in the heat, the thump of sacks being shifted from shade to sun and back again. Set against the scale of loss from years of drought, the scene is modest. Set against the daily demands of feeding children and keeping them in class, it is everything.

In Kismayo’s camps, the acacia’s small brown seeds have become a kind of currency — buying time, meals, a little security, a future measured in notebooks and uniforms. The women who shake them loose before dawn have turned a tree into a livelihood and, for now, a way to endure.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.