Somalis at a skills training session at the Shaqodoon NGO.

Somalia and the breakaway, and still unrecognised, state of Somaliland are plagued with challenges. Other than unemployment and dysfunctional governments, the populations reel from droughts, periodic flooding of the Shabelle and Jubba rivers, and huge swarms of locusts. Mustafa Othman is the executive director of the Shaqodoon Organisation, an NGO in Somalia, Somaliland and Kenya. He explains how they’re using technology to predict impending natural disasters.

Very high unemployment was one of the triggers for the founding of Shaqodoon, says Othman, speaking on a video call from Nairobi, where he now lives.