Somalia’s swift embrace of a contested Tanzanian result: pragmatic diplomacy or a sign of shifting regional norms?
When Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was among the first African leaders to congratulate Samia Suluhu Hassan on her emphatic re‑election in Tanzania, the message was concise and familiar in tone: “I extend warm congratulations to H.E. Samia Suluhu on her re‑election as President of the United Republic of Tanzania,” his office said. “Her victory reflects the trust and confidence of the Tanzanian people. Somalia looks forward to deepening our brotherly ties and advancing regional peace and prosperity.”
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On the surface, a routine diplomatic acknowledgement. Underneath sits a tangle of uneasy questions about electoral legitimacy, regional realpolitik, and the way African capitals are learning to live with contested polls.
Extraordinary margins, extraordinary suspicion
Suluhu was declared the winner with roughly 97 percent of the vote — a figure that would raise eyebrows in any democracy — and her victory has been shadowed by allegations of irregularities. Opposition figures say around 700 people were killed in unrest connected to the vote, a tally that international monitors and governments have not confirmed. Heavy security deployments, eyewitness accounts of protesters tearing down campaign posters and burning government property, and reports from NetBlocks of nationwide restrictions on social media and mobile internet paint a picture of a country in which normal channels of civic expression and scrutiny were constrained.
Critics inside and outside Tanzania describe the election as “shambolic,” arguing that it did little to enhance democratic norms. The main opposition leader, Tundu Lissu, was not on the ballot — detained on treason charges that his supporters say were politically motivated. For many observers, stacked votes, curbed digital spaces and the exclusion of key opponents form an increasingly familiar pattern across parts of the continent: an erosion of competitive politics cushioned by performative legitimacy.
Why Mogadishu moved quickly
Mohamud’s rapid congratulations can be read as pragmatic. Somalia, fragile and still in a long transition from decades of conflict, depends on predictable relations with its neighbours, including states that have a say in policing the Horn of Africa and in shaping corridors of aid, trade and security assistance. Somalia’s government has repeatedly sought to anchor itself through diplomatic engagement — presenting stability and cooperation as the counterweight to militias, piracy and the regional ambitions of external powers.
By welcoming Suluhu’s re‑election and emphasizing “brotherly ties,” Mogadishu signals a preference for continuity over confrontation. In a region where allegiances matter for access to training, intelligence, and maritime cooperation, swift recognition is not simply a compliment — it is insurance.
What this says about regional politics
Mohamud’s statement is part of a broader trend: African capitals increasingly weigh strategic stability more heavily than immediate calls for robust election verification. Leaders who prioritize national security, trade and diplomatic leverage are sometimes quicker to accept contested outcomes if the alternative is instability or diplomatic rupture.
That calculation raises difficult questions. Does early recognition normalize weaker standards of electoral integrity? Or does it simply reflect the messy reality that, for many states, the cost of principled isolation is too high when shared challenges demand cooperation?
Digital blackouts, contested truths
The reported nationwide throttling of social media and mobile internet — documented by NetBlocks and echoed in witness testimony — is part of a wider global pattern in which information controls have become a default government tool around sensitive polls. From Sudan to Myanmar and beyond, authorities have cut connectivity during unrest or contested votes to limit mobilization and obscure events in real time.
Those blackouts create parallel truths: official tallies and upbeat government statements on one side, fragmented reports from neighbourhoods where clashes and arrests occurred on the other. For diasporas that once relied on social platforms to follow homeland events, sudden disconnection is a chilling reminder of how fragile information ecosystems can be.
Implications for Somalia–Tanzania ties
Historically, Tanzania has played a measured role in regional diplomacy and peacekeeping. For Somalia, Kabul‑style realism may be the calculus: better to preserve working ties with an influential government in Dodoma than to risk alienation. Suluhu’s second term, despite the controversy, keeps a familiar partner in place for Somalia on issues ranging from maritime security to East African Community dynamics.
Yet the cost of quick recognition can also be political. Opposition movements and civic actors in Somalia and elsewhere watch how regional powers respond to contested ballots. If leaders routinely endorse winners amid credible irregularities, it can erode pressure for reform and weaken the bargaining power of domestic pro‑democracy forces.
Questions for the region — and the world
As capitals weigh whether to demand deeper scrutiny or move on, several hard questions linger: What standards should regional bodies apply when assessing elections that produce outsized margins and face serious procedural complaints? How should international partners balance the imperative of stability with the long‑term need to strengthen democratic institutions? And crucially, whose voices are allowed to be heard during moments of national crisis — those with the loudest megaphones, or those who can show up at polling stations freely and safely?
Tanzania’s vote will test more than the resilience of its own institutions. It will test whether regional actors — including Somalia — choose to amplify calls for electoral accountability or prioritize continuity in the face of uncertainty. The answer will matter, not only for Dodoma and Mogadishu, but for a continent where the rules of political contestation are being rewritten, sometimes one election at a time.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
