Insight Africa

“When a society intends on pursing every avenue of division amongst all its social and economic facets, the result is a guaranteed waste of precious time in the struggle for sovereignty. The only saving grace of such a peoples is a united and focused populous of youth”                                                                                                   - Hamza M.O Egal The recent social debate or debacle surrounding the announcement of the youth conference in the Somali capital of Mogadishu has highlighted something that most people of this nation have felt but largely ignored.   Often during my constant back and forth travels to the motherland I would encounter stringent inquires regarding my arrival. “ What NGO do you work with? Or which organisation are you intending to work for? Which politician are you related too? Or which government post are you here to appropriate?” These lines of inquiry would fleetingly change once I confirm that my trip is

Extremism is killing people all over the world on a daily basis yet the media only responds when the casualties are European or Caucasians. We live in an environment where all humans are under extreme cognitive manipulation, what happened in Paris is a constant reality in the Arabian peninsula and Africa. The questions we must ask are why innocent people are dying? Why the world leaders choose war over peace and stability? Why European foreign policy that is directly linked to extremism is not being evaluated? Why we are ever ready to blame victims i.e refugees as dangerous? Why no study was commissioned on the subsequent policy failures of the war on terror? The truth of the matter is no one more than the Muslim community suffers from these kind of attacks and the repercussions on a daily basis. The media needs to stop calling it Islamic terrorism and refer to it as what it is, a war between the Arab world and the western world sadly the Muslim community are stuck right in the mid

Much has been said of the horn of Africa and it is appropriate to say that the commentary has always carried a deleterious narrative. Somalia has been a nation at war with itself for various reasons; nevertheless its indigenous people have shown resilience that is extremely hard to replicate. This spirit is not only evident in the Somali ability to live within a land void of governance or any genuine political structures outside of the tribal setting, but more so in the private sector that has flourished in over 20 years of civil strife. In fact with all the money the international aid agencies have or have not put into humanitarian efforts in Somalia, it barely compares with the remittance industry of the country. An estimated $1bn-2bn is sent to Somalia from the huge diaspora communities the world over annually. The second largest driving force of the Somali economy is that of the telecommunication industry. The country has one of the cheapest tariffs on the continent giving peo

Often I shy way from participating or commenting on political matters concerning my land of origin, partly due to my lack of contextual knowledge, and partly because it is illogical to partake in something fundamentally flawed in relation to one's principles. This fault is the reason why my previous A-political stance has altered, and also due to my unwavering belief that we are each capable of becoming catalysts of positive change so long as it is truly desired. Since the civil war ended in Somalia, subsequent governments have all based the administrational structures of the country on the clan quota system.  This tribal established structure known as the 4.5 formula, which empowers the four main clans namely Darood, Digil, Hawiye and Mirifle while grouping the rest of the country’s inhabitants as the others (0.5), is what I consider illogical. Traditionally in Africa such systems have been used to unify different ethnic groups who found themselves fo