Blogging Somalia's Untold Stories with One Blog at a Time

Three weeks ago, I moderated a session on the shrinking online civic space in Somalia with prominent panelists in Mogadishu. The forum was the first of its kind to be held in Mogadishu where key issues including online harassment, smear campaigns, trolling, cyberstalking and impersonation as well as online deformation were discussed. The Panelists included well-known local journalist Mohamed Ibrahim Moalimu who formerly worked with BBC and Reuters, Zahra Qorane a photographer based in Mogadishu and Badra Yousuf, researcher and curator of Global Shaper’s Mogadishu chapter. These panelists shared different stories about online attacks on their social platforms, for instance, Mohamed’s twitter account was suspended in 2018 after it was allegedly reported by trollers, he had more than 15 thousand followers.   Zahra’s Facebook account was hacked twice in 2015 in a period of less than five months and on the other hand Badra has been constantly attacked personally and professionally

Dear Almas, words can’t express how much our hearts are broken and shattered into pieces by your sudden departure. As we write this tribute, we hope and pray that you are resting in the highest position of heaven, that the doors of heaven have been widely opened for you. May the Almighty Allah shower his mercy upon you and add you among the ones he is pleased with. We are still mourning and devastated by the fact that your precious life was brutally taken away too soon from us and until now we remain unaware of the heartless shooter who pulled that trigger. Perhaps the bullet that hit you is still feeling guilty. We wish the bullet would have been able to speak, to tell the truth to our unsewered questions.   What painfully strikes us the most is the beautiful unborn baby that was taken along with you before s/he was even born, you were supposed to be a mother not a victim of a cold-blooded shooting. They didn’t just kill you, they took two lives away from their loved family, aw

This article was originally published for The New Times Newspaper (Rwanda) A few days ago, I landed at Kigali International Airport past midnight around at 1:00 am, to be exact, shortly after the announcement of the flight attendant; “ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Kigali International Airport”. I was among the first passengers to disembark, and I immediately proceeded to the immigration desk. I cleared with the immigration in less than 10 minutes and found myself already out of the arrivals’ gate eagerly looking forward to seeing city often described as “Africa’s cleanest city”. Looking around, I immediately sensed that I had landed in a city that is entirely different from those I previously visited on the continent. Clean and quiet. I woke up to a morning breeze with a scenic sunrise view from my balcony and beautiful voices of birds, my eyes wandered out to the mountain above the landscape around the city. I saw people rushing to offices, children walking

On 20 th May 2019, Somalia’s Lower House passed a petroleum bill ahead of government’s plan to issue oil exploration license by the end of this year. According to the plan, the winners of the bid will be announced on 7 th November and the official agreement will be signed on December. The agreement will go into effect on 1 st January 2020. The bill was passed after getting vote of favor from 150 parliamentarians out of the 275 Lower House members, only 4 of them abstained. The rest were not in attendance. As a concerned citizen about the fate of this nation, I would like to shed light upon some major issues regarding the offshore oil exploration in Somalia. My observation is based on both the local context specially focusing on Somalia’s complicated and dynamic conflict while also looking at other similar situations in Africa.  Among the many stories that my grandfather told me as a kid, some of them were about tribal wars in many parts of Somalia. He would tell me how ma

The idea of 4.5 power sharing formula was the result of a Reconciliation Conference held in Djibouti in 2000, but what was meant to reconcile a society that suffered from years of conflict has only divided and disunited them in a manner that was completely deplorable. And since the 4.5 system was adopted, only two major clans (Hawiye and Darod) have been holding Somalia’s highest political ranks (The president and the prime minister). Even though it is not enshrined in the Provisional Constitution, the system became so embedded in the political system of the country and it is in full use now at the expense of large proportion of the population. Many believe that the system can fix Somalia’s 20-year tyrannical leadership of Mohamed Siad Barre. However, it is worth mentioning that the same system has excluded the other 2.5 clans (Dir, Digil/Milifle and minority clans) from running for the presidency. Even though Digil and Milifle didn’t run for the top two positions, they are cou

Kenya has been more generous, more supportive and kinder to Somali people than any other country in the greater Horn of Africa region. It has hosted the largest Somali refugees in one of the world’s biggest refugee complex shortly after Somalia’s civil war broke out in 1991. Those who were once refugees in Dadaab and Kakuma are among today’s most successful persons in Kenya and even in other parts of the world. Just to give an example, Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim black congresswoman in the US was once a refugee in Dadaab for four years after fleeing Somalia’s conflict. Kenya and Somalia have enjoyed long neighborhood partnership bonded by brotherhood, shared values and of course shared borders between the two countries. Thousands of Somali nomads cross the border between Somalia and Kenya every day for businesses, trade and other work related purposes.   Somalis in Kenya  Currently an estimated number of 2.5 million Somalis live permanently or temporary in Kenya making them