SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

6 domains mapped · Code: SO

These are jurisdiction-specific research-progress records. They expose first moves, likely actors, and institutional infrastructure where mapped; they are not a claim that every country has a finished statutory memo for all 61 domains.

Canonical domain beta-W from Industrial Monoculture. Local route severity is a country-route triage value and is not used in the aggregate portfolio.

PRIMARY ROUTE:Somalia's charcoal production devastates acacia forests and finances armed groups. When charcoal trade flows are traced and linked to deforestation data, W becomes computable.

4 actor-lane actions mapped

Canonical domain beta-W from Fisheries. Local route severity is a country-route triage value and is not used in the aggregate portfolio.

PRIMARY ROUTE:Foreign industrial trawlers, many of them Chinese, strip an estimated $300 million a year of tuna, mackerel and lobster from Somalia's 3,300-kilometre coast, starving roughly 90,000 artisanal fishermen and feeding the piracy resurgence. Somalia has a declared 200-mile exclusive economic zone and a Ministry of Fisheries, so licensing, monitoring and patrol coverage are the missing pieces rather than any physical limit on the fish.

4 actor-lane actions mapped

Canonical domain beta-W from Deforestation & Industrial Logging. Local route severity is a country-route triage value and is not used in the aggregate portfolio.

PRIMARY ROUTE:Charcoal made from slow-growing acacia is exported to Gulf states in breach of the UN Security Council ban, earning al-Shabaab tens of millions of dollars a year while a tree is felled roughly every 30 seconds, accelerating desertification across rangeland that pastoralists depend on. The trade survives on falsified origin papers and bribed port officials, so customs transparency and alternative cooking fuel can close it.

4 actor-lane actions mapped

Canonical domain beta-W from Industrial Agriculture Methane. Local route severity is a country-route triage value and is not used in the aggregate portfolio.

PRIMARY ROUTE:Roughly 56 million head of cattle, camels, sheep and goats supply about 40 percent of GDP and most export earnings, but enteric methane and overstocking degrade fragile rangeland and deepen drought vulnerability for the same pastoralists. Animal-health certification, rotational grazing and rangeland restoration raise herd productivity and lower emissions per animal at once, so the trap turns on extension and veterinary capacity rather than abandoning herding.

4 actor-lane actions mapped

Canonical domain beta-W from Stablecoins & Shadow Banking. Local route severity is a country-route triage value and is not used in the aggregate portfolio.

PRIMARY ROUTE:Somalis move most of their money through hawala (about 55 percent) and mobile money such as Hormuud's EVC Plus and Telesom's Zaad (about 42 percent), and remittances are a larger share of the economy than aid or exports. Because much of this flows without identity checks and the Central Bank cannot yet supervise the whole country, the same rails that sustain millions also carry terrorist-financing and laundering risk, which proportionate registration and customer-identity rules can close without cutting off the diaspora.

4 actor-lane actions mapped

Canonical domain beta-W from Defense Procurement. Local route severity is a country-route triage value and is not used in the aggregate portfolio.

PRIMARY ROUTE:With the 30-year UN arms embargo lifted in 2023 under Resolution 2714, weapons supplied to Somali government forces have repeatedly turned up in al-Shabaab hands, meaning each poorly tracked procurement can arm the insurgency it is meant to defeat. The leak runs through weak depot security and weapons-and-ammunition accounting, so registration, marking and audit close it rather than any inherent feature of the supply.

4 actor-lane actions mapped

© 2026 Erik Postnieks · Independent Researcher · Salt Lake City