Government and public sector

A federal ministry, with a development institution

Working with a development institution, the firm drafted the subsidiary legislation that operationalises the Companies Act 2019, including minority-shareholder protections, electronic registration and the rules for converting between company forms. The drafting was supported by public and private validation workshops in Mogadishu and Hargeisa, so that the instruments reflected the positions of the ministries, the registry and the market participants who would have to work with them once they were in force.

A sovereign government

The firm acted as co-counsel to a sovereign government in an international commercial arbitration seated in Europe, with roughly 157 million euros in dispute under a public infrastructure contract. Its contribution centred on Somali constitutional and administrative law: whether the contractual commitments in question were validly entered into given the approvals that state institutions are required to give, and what the consequences are when that process is not followed. The work combined close analysis of the domestic legal framework with the practical demands of an international arbitral proceeding.

A global technology company

Instructed on the licensing and regulatory framework for landing major international connectivity infrastructure, the firm advised on submarine cable landing licences, the treatment of carrier-neutral data centres, infrastructure-sharing arrangements and the law-enforcement assistance obligations that attach to the cable. Because the landing engaged both the Federal Government and a second Somali jurisdiction, each question had to be resolved twice and reconciled. The advice was structured so that it would hold as the subsidiary regulation under the National Communications Act 2017 continues to develop.