North Africa

Egypt’s campaign against online creators exposes a new front in the fight over free expression In the last weeks Egyptian authorities have detained and charged dozens of people who make videos, run social accounts or otherwise produce content for the internet, according to Human Rights Watch. The accusations are striking not for their specificity but for their vagueness — a range of crimes from “public morals” violations to “undermining family values” — and for whom they appear to be aimed at: a generation that came of age…

Nuruddin Farah’s Honorary Degree Is Also a Map of Where African Letters Are Headed On a damp London morning, SOAS, University of London, conferred an honorary doctorate on the Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah — an author whose life’s work has been to rescue a country by rebuilding it on the page. The honor feels tidy and ceremonial; Farah’s novels are anything but. Over nearly five decades, from the dictatorship of Siad Barre to the age of global exile, he has written Somalia into visibility with an unblinking steadiness. You…

Tragedy in Darfur: Landslides Devastate Communities Amidst Ongoing Strife In the remote, rugged mountains of Sudan’s western Darfur region, life can be unforgiving. Last week, the village of Tarasin became the epicenter of this harsh reality. Three catastrophic landslides obliterated the village, leaving behind a trail of devastation that claimed at least 373 lives, with fears that the death toll could rise to over 1,000. "The people lost everything," Francesco Lanino, operations director at Save the Children, told…

Egypt’s Troops Prepare to Join Somalia Mission, Recasting the Horn’s Security Equation The Egyptian flag will soon fly alongside others on the front lines of Somalia’s long war with al-Shabab. After a week of site visits and quiet consultations in Mogadishu, an Egyptian military team has wrapped up an assessment that clears the way for Cairo’s first troop deployment to the African Union Support Mission in Somalia, or AUSSOM. On paper, it’s a straightforward move—one more nation committing forces to an African Union effort…

Egypt prepares to join new African Union mission in Somalia after six-day assessment What happened In Mogadishu, on a humid Friday where the sea breeze barely cuts the dust, the African Union’s top envoy in Somalia closed the door on a week of quiet but significant diplomacy. Ambassador El Hadji Ibrahima Diene, the Special Representative of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission and head of the AU Support Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), met an Egyptian military team at the end of its six-day visit — a final check…

Ethiopia’s Red Sea Gambit: Ambition, Anxiety and a Region on Edge For Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the Red Sea is no longer a distant horizon. In a televised interview on September 1, he cast the country’s lack of coastline—lost when Eritrea gained independence three decades ago—not as a historical fact but as a fixable error. “The mistake made 30 years ago will be corrected,” he said, adding that remaining “a prisoner of the land” had become an existential challenge for a nation of more than 120 million. The…

Guinea brush past Somalia in Kampala to keep 2026 World Cup push alive Guinea kept their World Cup dream humming on Friday with a professional 3–0 win over Somalia at Mandela National Stadium in Kampala, a tidy night’s work that moved the Syli National to 10 points and kept them within touching distance of Group G’s frontrunners as Africa’s qualifiers tilt into their decisive stretch. Serhou Guirassy struck early, an own goal midway through the second half doubled the cushion, and a stoppage-time tap-in from Ousmane Camara…

Rising Tensions: The Battle Over the Nile In the heart of East Africa, the waves of a centuries-old conflict ripple through the waters of the Nile, igniting fears of instability and regional tension. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), touted as a beacon of progress for Ethiopia, has become a battleground for Egypt and Sudan, who insist on keeping discussions limited to the three nations directly flanking this vital resource. Their recent assertions highlight the deep-seated anxieties surrounding the dam's operation…

Somalia Brings the Prophet’s Birthday Back Into the Sun Streets of Mogadishu turn green and white Before dawn on Thursday, Mogadishu’s sea breeze carried a different kind of chorus. It rose from mosques and courtyards, from balconies draped with fabric the color of limes and spring leaves. By midmorning, the capital’s streets swelled with thousands of worshippers—many young and dressed in white—waving bright green flags and singing devotional poetry in the rolling cadence of Somali Arabic. Loudspeakers crackled with…

Somalia inches up the Global Peace Index — but the peace dividend remains out of reach In Mogadishu, markets open before sunrise, as vendors arrange tomatoes beneath corrugated roofs and scan their phones for security alerts with the same routine as checking prices. That small, practiced caution has defined Somali life for a generation. This week, a global metric offered a sliver of encouragement: Somalia has improved slightly on the 2025 Global Peace Index, edging to 151st out of 163 with a score of 2.983 — its first dip…