West Africa

Breaking: Puntland State deploys troops to Sool to block voter registration as tensions spike What happened Puntland State authorities have deployed security forces to parts of Somalia’s Sool region to halt a federally backed voter registration drive, residents and local officials said Monday, deepening an already volatile political standoff in the country’s northeast. Convoys moved into Boocame district and the nearby Falariyale area—territory where electoral commissions from the federal government and a newly declared…

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…

Burnsville woman charged as 75th defendant in Minnesota’s sweeping ‘Feeding Our Future’ case MINNEAPOLIS — Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged a Burnsville woman with siphoning nearly $1 million from a taxpayer-funded child nutrition program — the latest arrest in what authorities call the largest COVID-19 fraud case in the United States. Prosecutors say 44-year-old Muna Wais Fidhin misused federal money meant to serve meals to children during the pandemic, instead paying her mortgage, buying a car and sending…

Analysis: In Puntland State, a Clash Over Asphalt and Paychecks Reveals a Deeper Crisis In the semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland State, a single sentence has cracked open a wider argument about what progress looks like—and what keeps a state together. “Roads are more important to us than their salaries,” Finance Minister Mohamed Farah Mahmoud said recently, defending public works spending as government employees report going months without pay. The backlash was swift and raw: civil servants, police, and ordinary…

Somalia sets Sept. 9 restart for voter registration in push toward one-person, one-vote Somalia’s electoral clock will start ticking again next week. The country’s Independent National Electoral and Boundaries Commission announced Saturday that voter registration for long-promised one-person, one-vote elections will resume on Sept. 9 and run through Sept. 30 — a narrow window with outsized stakes for a nation attempting to exit decades of indirect, clan-based politics. What’s new Commission Chairman Abdikarin Ahmed Hassan…

Kenyan man indicted in U.S. child-nutrition fraud probe as investigators trace money to Nairobi real estate

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…

Arrest of Puntland State Football Figure Deepens Rift in Somali Soccer Puntland State’s already fraught football politics spilled into public view on Saturday when security forces detained Mohamed Ali Isse, widely known as Ciiro, at Garowe’s airport as he prepared to board a flight out of the city. Authorities have not announced charges or publicly explained the arrest. Local outlets and football insiders say it may be tied to a leadership struggle inside the Puntland State Football Association, or to alleged political links…

Somalia says 12 al-Shabaab fighters killed in Galguduud raid as forces press pursuit toward El-Buur Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency said Friday it killed at least 12 al-Shabaab fighters, including what it described as senior figures, during a raid on a militant training site in the country’s central Galguduud region. The operation, conducted with unspecified international partners, also wounded 13 others and sent surviving militants fleeing toward the El-Buur district, according to the agency. What…

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…