East Africa

Kenya Denies Jubaland Troop Incursion as Mandera Leaders Cry Foul — A Border Dispute With Long Shadows NAIROBI — Kenya’s government says nothing unusual is happening in Mandera. Local leaders insist armed men from neighboring Somalia are inside the town, disrupting life and humiliating the state. In a region where a dirt road can mark the difference between war and peace, the truth can be as contested as the border itself. What Nairobi says Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen pushed back hard on claims that…

U.S. lawmakers push separate travel advisory for North Western State of Somalia — a small bureaucratic change with big geopolitical ripples In Washington, sometimes the biggest signals come through the smallest notices. A “Do Not Travel” warning sits quietly on the State Department’s website and shapes everything from dealmaking to diplomacy. Two senior Republican lawmakers now want to carve North Western State of Somalia out of the blanket red warning that covers all of Somalia—arguing that what looks like a technical fix…

In Exile but Unbowed: Somalia and Guinea Chase Pride and Direction in Kampala A match far from home On a breezy Friday evening in Kampala, Uganda’s Mandela National Stadium will stand in for Mogadishu. Somalia “hosts” Guinea there in a World Cup qualifier that won’t change the group’s balance of power, but still holds weight in ways a scoreboard can’t always measure. It is a low-stakes fixture, perhaps, but one heavy with pride, patience and the hope of forward motion for two teams searching for a foothold. Somalia’s…

Gunfire in Beledweyne after road survey blocked; police officer, civilian wounded Somali police and an armed militia exchanged fire Wednesday in the riverside city of Beledweyne after engineers surveying a new paved road were turned back, residents said. A police officer and a civilian were wounded in the brief but intense clash, underscoring how infrastructure can become a frontline in Somalia’s fragile security landscape. What happened The confrontation erupted in Buundoweyn, a densely populated neighborhood on the…

‘If I can’t work, why am I here?’ A Somali man’s plea in an anxious English town On a gray afternoon in Nuneaton’s market square, shoppers ferried plastic bags past a man who says he wants to go home — not to his hostel, and not to the Britain he’s lived in for two decades, but to Somalia. It’s a jarring sentiment in a town on edge about migration, but for 50-year-old Yusuf Ali Hamud, the calculation is simple: “I don’t feel safe here,” he told Sky News in an interview. “Back home, now, I’m safe. I want to go back.” Hamud…

Somalia says senior al‑Shabaab commander killed in planned raid in Hiiraan Somalia’s intelligence service says it has killed a senior al‑Shabaab commander in a targeted operation in central Somalia, the latest strike in a grinding campaign to weaken the al‑Qaeda‑linked insurgency as it battles for influence along the Shabelle River valley. In a statement Wednesday, the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) said its forces, backed by international partners, conducted a planned raid in the Shaw area of Hiiraan…

Egypt’s Somalia Gamble: Peacekeeping, Power Plays, and a Dam That Won’t Go Away On paper, Egypt’s plan to send troops to Somalia is a textbook peacekeeping deployment under an African Union mandate. In practice, it lands squarely on the fault lines of one of Africa’s thorniest rivalries: Cairo versus Addis Ababa, with the Horn of Africa as the stage and the Nile as the subtext. Egypt says its soldiers are going to Somalia to help fight al-Shabaab and stabilize a country clawing its way out of decades of war. Ethiopia hears…

Burkina Faso's Controversial Step Backward: The New Anti-Homosexuality Law In a rapid and unsettling turn of events, Burkina Faso's transitional parliament has unanimously passed a bill that criminalizes homosexual acts, placing the West African nation in a club of over 30 African countries where same-sex relations are outlawed. The new law imposes harsh penalties, including prison sentences ranging from two to five years, fines, and even the threat of deportation for foreign nationals caught violating its provisions. This…

Somalia and Serbia Reach for Old Ties to Shape New Deals In the polished halls of Belgrade’s presidential complex, Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre stood beneath a bank of flags and spoke a sentence you now hear in capitals across the Global South: “Somalia offers vast opportunities for investment.” On Tuesday, Barre and Serbian Prime Minister Đuro Macut signed a health cooperation agreement and pledged to deepen ties in trade, investment, education and security—an agenda that reads less like a single visit than a…

Prominent elder slain in Somalia’s Gedo region as tensions simmer along border Attack in Beled Hawo A prominent community elder and local council member was shot dead late Monday in Beled Hawo, a hard-to-govern border town in Somalia’s Gedo region where political strain and armed groups have frayed the edges of daily life. Residents identified the victim as Aden Mohamud Buurdhubo, a respected figure known for mediating disputes and pushing for calm in a place that often runs on uneasy truces. Gunmen opened fire under cover…