Naomi Conteh

The case for recognising Somaliland is strong on its own terms. Democratic. Stable. Self governing for 35 years. The Red Sea argument just made it stronger. But African sovereignty should not need a American strategic crisis to become legible to the world. Somaliland deserved this in 1991. The fact that it took Iran closing Hormuz to get here is the part worth sitting with. foxnews.com/world/iran-hou…

Boko Haram. ISIS West Africa. Bandits. Separatists. Four conflict theaters inside one country simultaneously. Foreign Affairs published the analysis this week. But here is what the analysis does not name. The Wahhabi mosque came before the madrasa. The madrasa came before the recruiter. The recruiter came before the fighter. Nigeria's violence did not emerge from Nigerian soil. It was seeded, financed and ideologically directed from outside the continent. The governance failures are real. But they are not the origin story. foreignaffairs.com/nigeria/why-vi…

Qatar mediates. Saudi Arabia brokers. Both are prolonging Sudan's war according to a new analysis published today. Qatar financing Islamist networks embedded in the SAF. Saudi Arabia using Sudan as leverage against Iran and the Gulf rivalry with the UAE. The Sudanese people are not a priority in any of this. They are the terrain on which Gulf ambitions are being settled. The people of Africa should not be an imperial gulf project eurasiareview.com/03062026-gulf-…

Eastern Congo. ISIS linked fighters killing civilians in an active Ebola zone. Health workers trying to contain an outbreak with no licensed vaccine while armed groups deliberately block surveillance and contact tracing. The ADF is a foreign ideological project. ISIS recognised it. Directed it. The people dying in Mbau tonight are paying for an ideology that nobody in that village created or asked for. reuters.com/world/africa/i…

@NATO @SecGenNATO How do you feel about a NATO ally propping up their imperial regimes in Africa ? I dont think I saw that in your charter x.com/DecolonialEye/…

The NATO-Ukraine Council met in Kyiv 🇺🇦 for the first time While in Kyiv, @SecGenNATO highlighted the presence of all 32 Allies in Ukraine as a strong sign of the enduring bond between the Alliance and 🇺🇦 ↓ nato.int/en/news-and-ev…

@trtafrika These meetings are textbook neo-Ottoman expansion across the Horn. Read between the lines x.com/DecolonialEye/…

Niger's President Tchiani: - President Erdogan always attached significance to Niger and closely followed progress of our relations and extended support for effective fight against terror - I would like to thank Türkiye for its support in field of defence and for its contribution to peace and security of our people - Agreements signed today will expand our bilateral cooperation in many other areas

LIVE: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds joint press conference with his Nigerien counterpart Abdourahamane Tchiani after talks at Presidential Complex in Ankara twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…

@ConflictTR These meetings textbook neo-Ottoman expansion across the Horn. Read between the lines x.com/DecolonialEye/…

Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan: ''Afrika halklarının kara gün dostu olarak elimizdeki tüm imkanlarla Nijer'in kalkınma mücadelesini destekliyoruz.''

Track the bases, the mosques, the Brotherhood-linked appointments, not the press releases. Sudan deserves real self-determination not another foreign Islamist power structure wearing solidarity as a mask. The Horn is watching who actually builds capacity versus who plants flags and ideologies. eurasiareview.com/03062026-turke…

Africa is not empty territory for 21st-century revivalist empires. The body count keeps climbing. Resources keep flowing out. Locals are fed slogans of “Islamic brotherhood” while their country is carved up in closed-door Islamist deal-making.

Turkey just rolled out the red carpet for al-Burhan in Ankara. This isn't "mediation" or brotherly aid. It's the overt consolidation of an Islamist imperial outpost in the Horn. Here's the real story 🧵

Because the Middle East is considered more important by the United States, African interests are repeatedly sacrificed, argue Zuri Linetsky and Michael Woldemariam. foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/03/ame…

Foreign Affairs just said it plainly. Migration does not just move people. It moves democrats out of authoritarian states and into stable ones. Every Sudanese doctor in London. Every Malian engineer in Paris. Every Ethiopian journalist in Washington. Their absence makes the governments they fled from harder to challenge. The foreign powers sustaining those governments are not just winning the war. They are emptying the country of the people who would end it. foreignaffairs.com/europe/how-mig…

🩸🗺️ THE HORN OF AFRICA IS NOT A REGION. IT IS A REAL ESTATE PORTFOLIO. AND AFRICANS ARE NOT THE LANDLORDS. Somaliland seemingly only gets recognized because it has Berbera. Djibouti hosts five foreign militaries because it has Bab el-Mandeb. Egypt is building warship berths in Eritrea and Djibouti because it wants the southern Red Sea. Turkey activated a Somali port and a Sudanese base because they wants the corridor. Russia has a Sudan naval agreement because it wants the access. Iran had it first through Port Sudan before the SAF needed to look respectable. EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY in the Horn of Africa is purely being valued for what sits on its coastline. Not one of them is being asked what they want to build on it. That is not geopolitics. That is the same map. Different century.

The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on commanders of armed groups it accused of driving the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where fighting has continued despite mediation efforts by Washington. reuters.com/world/africa/u…

US State Department briefing to Congress makes it explicit: America is expanding security, economic and military cooperation with Somaliland - Berbera port, Red Sea stability, and disrupting Al-Shabaab/Houthi networks. All while repeating the ritual line about respecting Somalia’s territorial integrity. This is straightforward realpolitik. Somaliland has delivered functional governance, secure territory and strategic location for over three decades. Mogadishu has not. Washington is responding to reality on the ground rather than diplomatic fiction. Somaliland’s model of self-built institutions, own revenue, own security proves that sustained capacity and geographic value create leverage far more effectively than appeals to international norms or perpetual aid dependence. The Horn is watching. Strong internal sovereignty beats managed fragility every time. thereporterethiopia.com/50958/

Aid cuts hurt the vulnerable short-term — facts are facts. But the long game? Forcing African political economies to generate their own surpluses, tax their own elites, and stop treating foreign grants as fiscal policy. The decolonial move isn't defending the old aid regime. It's accelerating the transition to self-reliance before the next intervention fills the vacuum. Africa doesn't need better donors. It needs fewer dependencies.

Real sovereignty isn't begging donors to "narrow priorities" or praying for AI farm tools in local languages. It's states with actual control over their resources, borders, and revenue. Not perpetual aid clients whose health systems collapse the moment Washington or Brussels tighten belts. Somaliland built something despite the system. Most others got trapped inside it.

"200,000 extra African children dead in 2025." Gates Foundation CEO’s response in Foreign Affairs: 'This is fine. We’ll just do more with less.' The mask is off. Foreign aid isn't ending development, it's exposing how much of it was never about development in the first place. foreignaffairs.com/united-states/…