SEEDSomali Education &Economic Development

Six million people. A young, resourceful region. A generation of work still ahead.

SEED is a nonprofit organization that works alongside the government and people of the Somali Regional State of Ethiopia on its longest-standing challenges: how its people learn, what they are trained to do, how they live from the land, and how they build and keep capital.

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12%

Of women in the Somali Region can read and write.

Ethiopia Mini DHS 2019

14%

Net enrollment in Grades 7–8. Nearly every child starts school; few stay past the early grades.

Ministry of Education, ESAA 2020/21

<3%

Of the region’s Grade 12 candidates passed the 2025 national exam: fewer than 500 of more than 16,000.

Somali Regional Education Bureau, 2025

2.1M

Livestock lost in the region to the 2020–2023 drought, more than half the regional herd.

FAO / Food Security Cluster, 2023

Our Work

Four areas, matched to the region’s four deepest challenges.

In each, our aim is the same: build something that raises the capability of the people of the region and that will still be standing, under local leadership, a generation from now. In each, we bring the best technology available, including artificial intelligence, and we publish what we learn.

Education

Mass education for the region’s children, in their own language, focused on the early grades where learning is decided.

Learn more →02

Human Capital

Training the engineers, health workers, teachers and tradespeople the region needs, tied to the employers who will hire them.

Learn more →03

Agriculture

Upskilling the farmer and the pastoralist so that productivity rises and a single drought no longer destroys a family’s wealth.

Learn more →04

Economic Empowerment

Stimulating private capital and entrepreneurship, structured in keeping with the community’s values.

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The Challenge

A region that has made real progress on access, and now faces the harder work of quality, resilience and opportunity.

Primary enrollment, below 10 percent in 1991, is now close to universal. The next tasks are harder: children who are enrolled but do not yet learn to read, graduates without the skills employers need, herders one failed rain away from losing everything, and traders with no path to capital.

Read the full picture, with sources →

Research