BY NANGAYI GUYSON IN KAMPALA UGANDA

The Republic of Somalia formerly known as Somali Democratic Republic is considered as the worst country in the whole world, in 2010, analysts at the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company of The Economist, were asked to identify the world’s worst country in the year ahead and Somalia was named the worst.

Who can help save Somalia ?, the answer to this question is , the Somalis themselves should save Somalia because they are the ones who knows there problems better, The country is Plagued by civil war, grinding poverty and rampant piracy.

Calling Somalia a country is a stretch. It has a president, prime minister and parliament, but with little influence outside a few strongholds in the capital, Mogadishu. What passes for a government is protected by an African Union peacekeeping force guarding the presidential palace. Most of the country is controlled by two armed, radical Islamist factions, al-Shabab (the Youth) and Hizbul Islam (Party of Islam), which regularly battle forces loyal to the government. Both demand the imposition of strict Islamic law, . Al-Shabab took responsibility for suicide-bombings in Mogadishu in September that killed 17 peacekeepers; America considers the group an al-Qaeda ally.

Poor countries are often defined by their weak health, education and income measures, but conditions in Somalia are mostly too wretched to record. What little data can be gleaned are truly awful: according to the UN’s World Food Programme, more than 40% of the population need food aid to survive, and one in every five children is acutely malnourished.

The constant fighting has internally displaced more than 1.5m people, with a third living in dire, makeshift camps. Aid workers have been able to supply them with less than half the daily water needed.
An international aid group said over 800 Somali children arrive at Kenyan refugee camps each day to escape their country's devastating drought.
Save the Children says that the children are part of the nearly 1 300 people who come each day to the overcrowded Dadaab refugee camps in north-eastern Kenya.
The group also said that some families walk through sand and searing heat for more than a month looking for food, water and shelter.
The UN refugee agency says 20 000 Somalis have arrived in Kenya over the past two weeks alone, a sharp increase from last year when some 6 000 to 8 000 Somalis were arriving in Kenya each month.

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