President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's plans to impose a patently unworkable one-person, one-vote (OPOV) model are pushing Somalia to the brink. The country is deeply fractured, with Jubaland and Puntland disengaged from Mogadishu and a host of others resistant to Villa Somalia's Islamist centralising agenda. The national opposition is vowing to resist a perceived choreographed plan by the Somali president to either rig dubious OPOV polls or seek a term extension. Meanwhile, rumours are rife in Mogadishu that clans are stocking up on arms and militias are mobilising. There are fears the growing political strain could trigger the fragmentation of the military and security services.
In 2022, during Somalia's prolonged drought, temperatures regularly exceeded 32°C, displacing over a million people and killing thousands. While the increasing regularity of Somalia's ever-more extreme drought-flooding cycles is generally understood, one of the more overlooked climate threats —known as 'wet bulb temperature' (WBT)— is likely to have a significant impact on the country.
The sudden suspension of US foreign aid is already having major reverberations around the Horn of Africa. Just days after Donald Trump's inauguration for his second non-consecutive term, a sweeping 90-day pause to foreign assistance was announced by the State Department– now led by Marco Rubio.
The troubles of the latest African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia rumble on. Nearly a month since its supposed launch, the funding black hole remains, numbers and composition of the troop-contributing countries (TCCs) are undecided, and the domestic political wrangling continues. Though the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) nominally began on 1 January 2025, even the UN Security Council Resolution 2767, adopted at the end of December, has allowed 6 months for the "realignment of troops and the transfer of locations." In other words, though the signage may have been changed, AUSSOM remains a shamble, and the security auspices bleak.
Last week, peaceful demonstrations were staged in Mekelle, protesting the unconstitutional denial of education to hijab-wearing girls in several schools in Axum, Tigray
On 25 January, dignitaries from Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya, and Ethiopia gathered in Dire Dawa in Ethiopia's Somali region to celebrate UNESCO's recognition of Xeer Issa, the customary legal system of the Issa clan, as "intangible cultural heritage." Headquartered in Paris, UNESCO's enshrining of Xeer Issa, rather than any of its other Somali counterparts, has been in part driven by its study and promotion by francophone Djiboutians. While it has been asserted that Xeer Issa is a particularly sophisticated example of oral Somali jurisprudence, which is debatable, UNESCO's recognition also raises questions about singling out a particular sub-clan when innumerate variations exist in all Somali-speaking regions.
On Monday, Somalia's Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission announced that an initial 300 polling stations had been identified for voters to cast their ballot in the upcoming one-person, one-vote (OPOV) elections. According to Villa Somalia's rhetoric, these OPOV elections would transform the country away from the 4.5 clan system-- and the first federally overseen direct polls in Somalia in decades. The reality is rather different.
On 6 January, South Sudan's First Vice President, Riek Machar, received a report from the Administrative Assembly of Abyei. The report-- presented by the region's Chief Administrator Dr Chol Deng Alak-- was an endorsement of a boycotted referendum in 2013, which showed overwhelming support by the Ngok Dinka majority for Abyei's integration into South Sudan.
'Isbaaro' (checkpoints) are a ubiquitous part of life for many Somalis. Decades after the 'isbaaro wars' of the 1990s, dozens are still dotted across Main Supply Routes (MSR) in central-southern Somalia, placed on the entrances of towns or serve as ad hoc, impermanent structures on more minor roads. Reflective of the contested patchwork of forces and administrations that comprise Somalia, while successive federal governments have pledged to tackle the entrenched issue, the checkpoints remain.
Last week, Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) Major General Alemeshet Degife gave an interview for state television. The controversial senior military commander, returned in November 2020 by PM Abiy Ahmed for the Tigray war, spoke about a number of topics, including the status of the Fano insurgency in Amhara and Ethiopia's relationship with Eritrea and Egypt.
On 18 January, a Kenyan aircraft delivered Jubaland President Ahmed Islam Madoobe from Kismaayo to Nairobi to allow him to travel to the UAE on health grounds. Defying a federal aviation ban imposed on Kismaayo, the private Kenyan plane did not seek clearance from Mogadishu's Traffic Control Centre and switched off its transponders when it crossed into Somali airspace. In turn, Somalia's Foreign Ministry promptly protested, terming it a breach of its airspace and sovereignty, summoning the Kenyan ambassador and threatening to recall its own representative in Nairobi. The flight has now tipped delicate bilateral relations between the neighbours into a tailspin.
At the beginning of January, reports emerged that Villa Somalia had granted a foreign businessman named Abu Yasir exclusive rights over Somalia's livestock exports. For an alleged USD 3 million bonus and a levy of USD 4 per head of livestock, it was agreed that the country's primary export would be handed over to a single individual.
No observer of the latest round of civil war in Sudan expected a quiet festive period. Millions of Sudanese civilians knew perfectly well that they would spend New Year's Eve on the run, in makeshift displacement camps or overcrowded homes away from the front lines. The comparatively lucky members of the Sudanese elite, able to take refuge in Nairobi, Cairo, one of the Gulf countries or further afield, saw 2024 change to 2025 in the knowledge of having lost family, friends, homes and much else back home in Sudan
On 8 December 2024, a coalition of Syrian rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) entered Damascus, ridding the Middle Eastern country of the long-serving dictator Bashar al-Assad after over 13 years of civil war.
On 25 December 2024, skirmishes between the Isaaq and Ogaadeen communities exploded into open violence in the Dacawaley kebele in the Harshin district within Ethiopia's Somali Regional State (SRS).
Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM) and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali met over the weekend in Addis Ababa to cement a tentative détente brokered in December by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The new momentum towards normalisation is welcome and certainly has the potential to de-escalate the dangerous tensions that have built up in the Horn in the last year. But beyond symbolism, will it change anything on the ground?
Puntland's military operations against the Islamic State-Somalia (ISS) in the rugged Al-Miskaad mountains are now well underway. After several months of preparations in 2024, the northern Federal Member State (FMS) is deploying considerable forces as part of Operation Hilaac (Lightning) to quash the influential jihadist wing located near the port city of Bosasso.
Mediation in the Sudan war may soon become the latest theatre in which an increasingly assertive and independent Türkiye inserts itself. Fresh from its major geopolitical coup in Syria, with its allied Islamist rebel forces toppling Iranian-backed dictator Bashar al-Assad, as well as the negotiated Somalia-Ethiopia 'Ankara Declaration,' Türkiye then offered to reconcile the "differences between Sudan and the UAE" in December.
Last November, several police officers and a bulldozer arrived in the Moalim Nur neighbourhood of Mogadishu to demolish houses on public land. They likely did not anticipate the welcome they received, with clashes erupting as federal soldiers resisted the land-clearance operation. When the shooting stopped, 5 people had been killed, the bulldozer destroyed, and the soldiers arrested. It was a particularly violent episode amid the federal government's quiet campaign to auction off public land in Mogadishu, which has picked up amidst the political turmoil of the past year.
Ethiopia's education system is in dire straights. According to the latest UN report, 9 million children are currently out of school– mainly across the Tigray, Amhara, and Oromia regions– primarily as a result of recent or ongoing armed conflict. For those who remain in school across the country, the quality of education has also broadly declined, as evidenced by disastrous national exam results of recent years.