Responsiveness, Transparency and Public Trust in Mogadishu: What a 2024 Study Reveals A digest of Sheikh Ali (2024), Journal of Somali Studies

Public trust underpins how well a city government can collect revenue, deliver services and win cooperation from residents. In Mogadishu — a capital with an estimated 2.7 million people across 17 districts — trust in municipal leadership has long been fragile. This 2024 study surveys 278 residents recruited online to test whether two widely promoted principles of good governance, transparency and responsiveness, are associated with trust in the municipality. Its central result challenges a common assumption about transparency, making it useful for local-government officials, development partners and governance researchers.

The survey yielded 278 valid responses (72% of the 385 sent out). Responsiveness is strongly linked to trust (R = .707), while transparency is not significantly linked to trust (r = .042). The model explains R² = .50 of the variance in trust.

Article at a Glance

The article is "Impact of Governance on Public Trust in Mogadishu's Municipal Leadership," by Ali Yassin Sheikh Ali (Faculty of Economics, SIMAD University). It was published in the Journal of Somali Studies (JoSS), Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 183–207, in the December 2024 issue. Its research area is public administration and local governance, and its study context is Mogadishu Municipality, with respondents from all 17 districts. The method is a cross-sectional online survey (Google Forms, 5-point Likert scales) analysed with reliability and principal components analysis and linear regression (SPSS 20). The DOI is https://doi.org/10.31920/2056-5682/2024/v11n3a9.

The Research Problem

International research generally links good governance — transparency, accountability, responsiveness — to higher trust in government, though some studies find that more information can reduce trust. The author notes that delayed responses, weak communication and opaque decisions have eroded trust in Mogadishu's municipal authorities, yet local evidence on which governance practices matter most for trust is limited.

Research Objective

The study investigates how good-governance practices relate to public trust in the Mogadishu Municipality. It tests three null hypotheses of no relationship between public trust and good-governance practice overall (transparency and responsiveness together), responsiveness, and transparency.

How the Study Was Conducted

A quantitative, cross-sectional survey. Because reliable population data are lacking, the sampling frame was 42,385 Facebook users in Mogadishu, from whom university students, lecturers, municipal directors and officials were purposively selected. Of 385 questionnaires sent via Google Forms, 278 were completed.

The analysis followed six steps. In step 01, Sample, 78.4% of respondents were male, 75.5% were aged 18–30, 95% held a bachelor's degree or higher, and Hodan accounted for 21.3%. In step 02, Item reduction, 13 of the 28 items were retained: transparency 5, responsiveness 4 and trust 4. In step 03, Reliability, Cronbach's alpha was .77–.83. In step 04, Component analysis, KMO was .879, two components explained 59.3% of variance, and accountability items were dropped. In step 05, Regression, trust was regressed on both practices together, then on each alone. In step 06, Hypothesis tests, the null hypotheses were accepted or rejected on the model F-tests.

Key Findings

The model summaries are as reported in the article, where the first and second are both headed "Table 4" and "Table 6" and the third is "Table 7." No regression coefficients are reported. The model with responsiveness and transparency together has R = 0.707, R² = 0.500 and F = 137.5, and is significant (p < .001). The model with responsiveness only has R = 0.707, R² = 0.500 and F = 276.0, and is significant (p < .001). The model with transparency only has R = 0.042, R² = 0.002 and F = 0.50, and is not significant (p = .48).

1. Responsiveness is strongly associated with trust. Residents who see the municipality as responsive to their needs report much higher trust; responsiveness alone accounts for about half the variation in trust scores.

2. Transparency shows no relationship with trust. Its correlation with trust is close to zero. The author suggests residents may value tangible services over information, and that disclosure revealing poor performance may not build trust.

3. Transparency adds nothing once responsiveness is known. The combined model explains exactly as much as responsiveness alone (R² = .50 in both).

Reading note: The paper describes R = 0.707 as a "moderate" or "modest" correlation, although it is strong by usual benchmarks, and says transparency and responsiveness "collectively" explain 50% of trust when responsiveness alone does. Statements that their importance reaches "100%" have no statistical meaning. The title's "impact" should be read as association, since the data are cross-sectional.

What the Study Contributes

The contribution is primarily empirical: municipal-level evidence from Mogadishu showing that responsiveness, not transparency, is linked to trust. The author recommends faster, better service delivery and complaint handling, regular communication with residents, and transparency initiatives that are paired with visible improvements in performance.

Important Limitations

Identified by the author: The Facebook-based sample is more educated and digitally engaged than Mogadishu's population and may not represent all residents.

Skilful cautions arising from the study design: Purposive selection included municipal directors and officials, who may rate their own institution differently. More than half the original items were dropped, and accountability was removed entirely, so the final scales are narrow. Only model summaries are reported, so the relative weight of each predictor cannot be checked. Finally, no ethics approval or consent procedure is described, and some references appear mismatched.

Why This Research Matters

For Mogadishu's administration and its partners, the findings point toward responsiveness — resolving complaints and delivering services — as the practice most closely tied to trust, and caution against assuming that publishing information will build trust on its own.

Skilful Research Insight

Editorial commentary — not a finding of the study. Three lessons stand out. First, report coefficients and the correlation between predictors, not just R², so readers can judge each variable's contribution. Second, describe effect sizes with standard benchmarks. Third, the null result for transparency is the study's most interesting finding and deserves follow-up: does it depend on what is disclosed, whether residents believe it, or whether services improve alongside it? Pairing surveys with municipal data — complaint-resolution times, published budgets — and interviews with residents could answer that.

Read the Original Research

The original article is "Impact of Governance on Public Trust in Mogadishu's Municipal Leadership," published in the Journal of Somali Studies, 11(3), 183–207 (2024), by Ali Yassin Sheikh Ali. Its DOI is https://doi.org/10.31920/2056-5682/2024/v11n3a9, and the article can be accessed via that DOI link. Skilful summarises; all findings belong to the original author.

SEO Information

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