There is a huge danger in calling out aid agencies and their projects and saying, “Look how well they're doing”, because that immediately elicits counter-responses: “Oh, no; they messed up here and here and here.” I'm a little reluctant to give a shout-out to specific aid agencies.
When I'm in the field, there's no question that some are certainly looking harder than others at new ways of doing business in Somalia. To the extent that aid agencies can build and retain top-notch national teams, they stand to have a much greater rate of success. Somalia is very inaccessible to outsiders. It's almost impossible for outsiders to program effectively in Somalia without a national team that really knows what it's doing, and that's a lesson many have learned long ago.
Many have been innovative in the ways they have allowed their national staff to take global issues—such as human rights or women's rights—and repackage them so they don't appear to be our agenda being foisted on Somalis, because that's a great way for these programs and agendas to fail. National staff know how to nationalize these issues, to indigenize them—to draw on Islamic traditions, for instance, as a way of arguing for women's rights. That's very effective and innovative.