On a shoreline outsiders link with suicide attacks and armed men, a young Somali tour guide is building a small business showing visitors Mogadishu’s beaches, dunes and markets — and she is not alone. Somalia’s tourism department counted about 10,000 visitors in 2024, a 50% rise on the year before, even as the capital’s reputation stays decades behind.
The guide, profiled in reporting published on November 7, 2026, is among a growing handful of locals taking tourists beyond the headlines. Her favourite stop is Jazeera beach, where the Indian Ocean laps golden sand and visitors can move on to nearby dunes. It's one of the tourist attractions where we bring our guests. It's a nice place,
she says.
Five Tourists a Week Counts as Success
Tourism is a very young industry in Somalia, and the numbers she describes are modest. Five tourists in a week counts as a success, she says, though this year has been encouraging and she expects growth.
The trade is seasonal, and many would-be visitors still ask about security before they travel, often meeting checkpoints on arrival. Her own answer to that gap between reputation and reality: What they heard from the news and everywhere else is not the same as what they see in the country.
She is also working against the odds in her field. She continues a family profession in an industry with few women, and some people question whether Mogadishu is safe enough for a young woman to guide tours at all. She is determined to carry on. I would want them to see the beautiful, welcoming side of Mogadishu, and not the side that they heard from the media, which is explosions and bombs,
she says.
From Rubble to Building Boom
Since Somalia’s central government collapsed in 1991, Mogadishu endured decades of civil war, destruction and displacement, with the city centre largely reduced to rubble. After the Islamist militant group al-Shabab withdrew from most of the city in 2011 and the federal government was established in 2012, returning diaspora members, entrepreneurs and investors fuelled a construction boom of new hotels, restaurants and residential developments. Mogadishu is now a growing commercial hub, though insecurity and the legacy of conflict remain part of everyday life.
Somalia has mainland Africa’s longest coastline — more than 3,000km (1,860 miles) along the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden — with beaches and dunes sitting beside historic coastal cities shaped by centuries of Indian Ocean trade.
A Visitor Who Felt Safe Enough to Return Online
A Romanian traveller who spent only a few hours in the city — arriving overland from neighbouring Ethiopia — had already seen the dunes and the coastline. The desert was so beautiful to see. I have also enjoyed the beach, and the ocean. It is inspiring,
she says. She reports feeling no danger: I don't see anything dangerous. I feel safe and the people are warm.
She plans to post her pictures and encourage others to visit.
Visitors Now Sell Somalia Themselves
About 10,000 tourists visited Somalia in 2024 according to official figures, and the visitors now arriving promote the country themselves through social media. The guide is extending that reach with digital platforms aimed at audiences far beyond Mogadishu, and she is frank about the distance left to travel.
Somalia still has a long way to go before tourism becomes a major industry,
she says. Through my tours, I am giving visitors an opportunity to experience its landscapes, our culture and people beyond the familiar negative headlines.
For her, every visitor is another chance to tell a fuller story of the city. Whether the security fears that still stop most travellers from coming can be answered — and by whom — remains the question her business, and the country’s, cannot yet close.
