Samir Zitouni, 48, was left with critical injuries after he confronted the perpetrator, who wounded 10 people on the Doncaster to London King's Cross service on Saturday. www.newarab.com/news/algeria...

I spoke with three survivors of the RSF assault on el-Fasher. They described the city’s fall in harrowing detail and a desperate journey, carrying children and themselves wounded for days to reach safety in Tawila. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11...

An ad in today’s LA Times paid for by San Francisco-based pro-Israel organization “Facts and Logic About the Middle East” calls accusations of Israel committing genocide in Gaza “blood libel” and says “genocide liars deserve the label of ‘antisemite’”

Reading. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/w...

I interviewed Sami Hamdi's wife and his legal team. He's a British-Tunisian commentator and pro-Palestine activist that has been detained by US immigration authorities. He's been held by ICE for almost a week now www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10...

The night of rebellion that changed France and Algeria forever: On the night of 31 October 1954, a series of attacks across colonial Algeria marked the start of the Algerian War – a bloody conflict that would last eight years. rfi.my/B5iV.BS

Mohammed Zakaria lost sleep tracking el-Fasher’s fall, then saw on social media that his family had been killed. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10...

Africa has seen a wave of coups over the last five years. I dug into why this pattern keeps repeating itself, even in countries with totally different circumstances. somaliarchive77.substack.com/p/africas-mi...

The Madagascar coup, though popularly backed, continues a long-running trend of the militarisation of African politics in recent years, beginning with the belt stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, to Gabon to now Madagascar. apnews.com/article/mada...

"Thirty-two African nations spend more servicing external debt than funding healthcare, while 25 allocate more to debt than to education." www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10...

"While Mengistu’s move may advance Soviet aims in Africa (see box), it also relieves the U.S. of the moral burden of backing yet another bloodthirsty dictatorship." Archives, May 1977 time.com/archive/6881...

Been looking into why Jimmy Carter didn’t frame the 1977 Somalia-Ethiopia war purely in Cold War terms & back Mogadishu when Moscow supported Ethiopia. His administration was signalling it no longer wanted a reactive, anti-Soviet policy in the Third World.

My latest blogpost looks at the almost simultaneous collapse of Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia's governments at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s 89'-91: Northeast Africa's “collective near-death experience” somaliarchive77.substack.com/p/89-91-nort...

the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Attackers wore military uniform and rode vehicles imitating security forces to breach a high-security prison in the capital. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10...

"Numbers matter... Yet Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway University of London fears the continent is now on the cusp of a new 'data dark age'." My latest 👇 www.economist.com/middle-east-...

THREAD: this investigation took up over half my year, but it's here in @thecontinent.org: A Djiboutian drone strike in January was depicted as a army operation targeting rebels. It was actually a massacre of civilians. The bloodshed & coverup implicating Ethiopia, Djibouti, France & Turkiye. #OSINT

Who doesn't like a September dramatic sky? Blue sky, white cloud and early autumn wind over the Canal, London, York St.

In my latest piece, I spoke with Ethiopian doctors who went on strike – many of whom were arrested – over pay and working conditions earlier this year. The strikes were suspended to give the government a chance, but they could resume this month. www.aljazeera.com/features/202...

Hundreds of workers in Ghana have been protesting on the streets of the capital, demanding the cancellation of Africa's growing debt... rfi.my/BxzT.BS

Alex and I wanted to craft our research philosophy, and, according to Alex, Mila was the best person to lead the project. The final philosophy was more like a manifesto with 7 principles. You can read it at www.dair-institute.org/research-phi....

This week's east Africa newsletter is up. This week: we spoke to Afyare Elmi on the state of the nation (not good); the body of a Somali woman found in London; US likely holding its line on Somaliland; Minnesota Democrats drop Omar Fateh, & more. www.geeskanewsletter.com/p/somalias-t...

Africa Is Big, and It Wants the World’s Maps to Show It www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/w...

"Figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database indicate five out of six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians, an extreme rate of slaughter rarely matched in recent decades of warfare." www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Autocrats without borders -- my latest in this week's @economist.com, with reporting from Uganda. www.economist.com/middle-east-...

What are we missing when we talk about the arbitrariness of African borders and their economic/political impacts: kenopalo.substack.com/p/on-africas...

I wrote about Siad Barre’s use of storytelling and symbolism to create a heroic myth around himself. This myth, I argue, ultimately trapped him and led to the country’s downfall, rather than the rescue he promised the Somali public. somaliarchive77.substack.com/p/siad-barre...

Earlier this week, I spoke to Jama Ali Jama, a former Somali colonel, who recounted the military coup he took part in back in 1969 and its far-reaching consequences. He recalled speaking to Barre on that night, but a decade later he jailed him. somaliarchive77.substack.com/p/jama-ali-j...

Kwame Nkrumah. The Second Emancipation. My column. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/o...

New article just published! Alex Haley claimed to be a 'dispassionate chronicler', but he edited, omitted and even plagiarised parts of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I wrote about the complicated history of the book for @aeon.co: aeon.co/essays/how-a...

Migrants fleeing Ethiopia killed in shipwreck off Yemen coast rfi.my/BteY.BS

A new report finds nearly 150,000 people have been killed by al-Qaida and IS-affiliated groups across Africa over the past decade. The toll has risen steadily since the War on Terror began. 22,307 were killed in the past year alone — a 60% rise from 2020–2022.

Issue #8 of our weekly newsletter it out. We've got the return of Somalia's national ✈️; the national security advisor steps down (?); a film about a Somali student in the USSR whose life is upended by the Ogaden War — and more. somalibyte.substack.com/p/somalis-in...

I'd be lying if I said watching how the mainstream media has failed on reporting the Gaza genocide didn't also give me the push to go independent. What has been heartening throughout is seeing independent outlets fill the space left behind. They've never been more important.

The Associated Press has tallied the damage done to Sudan after two years of fighting. Here are some of the infographics they’ve produced:

A very powerful piece by ‪@adiod.bsky.social‬ 🔗 africainfact.com/ai-surveilla...

Driven to starvation, Sudanese people eat weeds and plants to survive as war rages apnews.com/article/suda...

My piece: More than 110 aid and human rights groups denounce 'mass starvation' in Gaza rfi.my/BrxH.BS

Somalia’s state-building project is in tatters www.economist.com/middle-east-...

Join us in ~45 minutes

Issue 6 of our newsletter is out: we cover racist abuse faced by Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh, Kenya’s move to go visa-free for Africans, and the anniversary of Bloody Monday – when a 1993 US airstrike killed scores in Mogadishu. www.geeskanewsletter.com/p/racism-vis...

Geeska’s weekly newsletter Acacia is nearing 500 subscribers—just five weeks in! We launched it to fill a gap in Somali and East African news, covering culture, politics, and security across the region, and stories from across the continent. Check it out and subscribe. somalibyte.substack.com

Scientists have released the closest images ever taken near the sun, captured by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe flying 3.8 million miles above the solar surface. See more images of solar eruptions on the sun: wapo.st/3Irm3P3

Once key powerbrokers in north-east Africa, Egypt and Somalia are now shadows of their former selves as they attempt to revive an old alliance. my latest www.geeska.com/en/diminishe...

The fourth issue of our weekly East Africa newsletter, Acacia, is out. This week, we cover forest fires, illegal fishing, and a report suggesting that Puntland may be facilitating arms transfers from the UAE to the RSF in Sudan. www.geeskanewsletter.com/p/emirati-ra...

The Sentry has released a report detailing how the Eritrean army has been looting personal belongings, gold, industrial equipment, and more from Tigray. Meanwhile, UK art houses have reported a sharp increase in the number of Ethiopian artifacts appearing in their collections.

The #3 issue of our weekly East Africa newsletter, Acacia, is up. We're got: Somali independence politics, aid dependence, Trump’s feud with Ilhan Omar & Zohran Mamdani joins the ranks of successful East African politicians in 🇺🇸 Read & subscribe www.geeskanewsletter.com/p/independen...

A special moment that never gets old, unboxing a new book after years of work on it. Please help me welcome The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide.

East Africa has been playing the long game and I for one think it's beautiful

It was a turning point in the push for African independence – and it took place in Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall. We meet the writer of a play about the fifth Pan-African Congress www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/j...