European Union gives Somalia $200 million in aid

By Yara Bayoumy, Reuters / November 3, 2012 The European Union began a new aid program for Somalia Saturday. The goal is to restore a central government, improve the legal system, education, and security in a country that recently saw an end to more than two decades of conflict. A truck driver walks past a warehouse to his vehicle in Mogadishu's seaport October 30. The seaport is currently experiencing an unprecedented amount of traffic as economic activity resumes in Mogadishu after almost two decades of civil war. The European Union has given Somalia 158 million euros or $200 million to improve education, the legal system and security, its new envoy said on Saturday, as the Horn of Africa nation tries to recover from more than two decades of conflict. 4 ways to prevent natural disasters from becoming human tragedies Difference Maker:Little newspaper gives hope to Africans who've fled to Israel Zimbabwe turns to drought-resistant crops. The new aid program follows the election in September of a new Somali president, the culmination of a regionally brokered, U.N.-backed effort to restore central government control and end fighting that has killed tens of thousands of people. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, elected in the first vote of its kind since Somalia slid into civil war in 1991, is grappling with corruption, an Islamist insurgency and piracy along the country's strategic Indian Ocean shipping route. RELATED: 4 ways to prevent natural disasters from becoming human tragedies "After 21 years, the government is finally rebuilding the systems of a functional state at local, regional and central levels," Michele Cervone d'Urso, the EU's special envoy to Somalia, told Reuters. "The EU is more committed to work directly and in partnership with Somalis. We will ask the implementing agencies to work more closely with the government and civil society." A suicide bombing in the capital Mogadishu on Saturday highlighted the challenges faced by the new Somali leader .