Doing business in Africa is tough, but even by those standards Somalia looks like commercial hell. Since the civil war broke out nine years ago, factories have been looted and phone lines ripped down. There is no central government, no police force and the main ports and airport are in the hands of violent warlords. But even in this rubble-strewn chaos the Somali business acumen has proven inextinguishable. And, incredibly, a private infrastructure has emerged which is functional, dependable - and one of the cheapest in the world.
In the capital Mogadishu, two mobile phone companies offer calls at rates to shame Eircell or Esat Digifone. Money can be transferred rapidly across the globe for a modest commission. Petrol costs about 10 pence per litre. Television and radio stations, a handful of factories, and an Internet company have sprung up.
Even Pepsi Cola is building a bottling plant on the edge of town. "You see something here you can't see in Europe," says Mr Abdullahi Mohamed Hussein, services manager at Aerolite Somali Telecommunications, with pride.
"People have understood they can do things by themselves, even without a government." Two years ago Aerolite started to rebuild its shattered network of phone lines by laying underground cables. Now it has 7,000 landline customers and 1,000 mobile subscribers who pay just $1.50 to call anywhere in the world, through a satellite link with a Norwegian telecom provider.
Of course, there is no tax to be paid - because there is nobody to collect it - but Aerolite has other unique overheads. Young men with machine guns sit outside Mr Hussein's city centre offices and senior managers must travel in armed convoy. Such "security" measures account for 20 per cent of costs. "We want to pay tax," he says, "because it would be cheaper. And if the airports and ports functioned we would be very happy." Across the street, security is also tight at the Bakaraat Bank of Somalia. At the front door a bearded gunman frisks an old man going in and relieves him of a long knife.
In the air-conditioned office inside, cashiers are quietly typing on new Compaq computers, wiring sums from $100 to $100,000 to Somalis in New York, London and Sydney. The Bakaraat Bank doesn't feature on any list of internationally-recognised banks. Instead it has tapped into the Somali diaspora to devise an ingenious international transfer system. It uses hundreds of expatriates in western cities as proxy cashiers, shunting payments in and out through their personal accounts. Like any bank, most of the transfers take place on paper and the balance is periodically settled through a bank in the Gulf states.
In this way, transfers take just a couple of days, cost at most two per cent commission and allow millions of dollars to flow in and out of Somalia every month. "Roughly one-third more comes in than goes out," says chief cashier Ali Diriyeh Warsameh, referring to the massive remittances from Somalis working abroad.
The hub of everyday commerce in Mogadishu is the sprawling Bakara Market, where everything from grenade launchers to dollars to exotic spices are bought and sold. Here, too, Somalis have devised a unique solution to the problem of obtaining a passport in a country with no passport office. In a small studio off the cramped alleyways, Haji Ali Adan sells passports. A photographer by trade before dictator Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, he "came across" a bundle of passports which had been looted from government stores.
Now he takes the applicant's photo, fills out the details and sends the passport to the "Bakara authority" for processing. An hour later it comes back covered with official-looking signatures and seals and the holder has become a Somali citizen - for just $25; twice that much for a diplomatic one.
"Since there is no other challenging authority, this is our only legitimate one," grins local journalist Hassan Barise. But while their makeshift systems work, ordinary Somalis are craving a return to peace and stability. Two weeks ago the Somali shilling was rocked when the market was flooded with $2.5 million of new currency, imported by unscrupulous businessmen with control of the national bank plates.
A recent peace initiative, which led to the country's first parliament in almost a decade, has been threatened by opposition from the violent warlords who have carved the country into fiefdoms. But there is a growing belief that power has passed from the gunmen to the businessmen.
"The warlords were strong two or three years ago but not today. Very few people respect them," says money-changer Ali Mohamed Gutale. "Now it is the businessmen that are in control." Abukar Omar Adan is one of the leading czars of the business classes. A large, well-fed man with unshakeable Islamic beliefs, he gives a rare interview at his hotel, the Ramadan. His extensive business interests are protected by an army of 400 paid gunmen and their "technicals" - four-wheel-drive jeeps mounted with anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns.
"These people trust me," he says. "I pay them well and they know I'm not going to return them to another clan war." Adan controls the only safe sea access to Mogadishu. Every day, ships holding up to 5,000 tonnes drop anchor inside a natural reef 30 kilometres north of the city. Thousands of porters earn $7 a day shouldering their cargo of cement, food and vehicle parts to the shore.
Port supervisor Abdul Hassan Abdi holds a list of the day's deliveries on the back of a cigarette carton. "When they come from the bush we have to teach them to swim," says the former maths teacher. "I care for these men like my sons." With its neighbours floundering at present - Kenya under corruption and drought, Ethiopia from famine and war - Somalis are looking to business to pull them out of the abyss created by war.
Abdi Mohamed Sabrie returned home from Britain last year to set up a pasta factory, one of the few manufacturing businesses in Mogadishu. It hasn't been easy, he says, but he is betting on the success of the peace process.
He says: "I pray to God it works because, if it doesn't, it will take us another 20 years to get things together again."
