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  • Published August 5, 2025

    One has to hand it to the Somali Regional State (SRS) President, Mustafa Omer Agjar; in a country not without unpopular politicians, he has a striking ability to aggravate so many in a single stroke. Without warning, on 27 July, the Somali Regional State Council announced that 14 new woredas, four zonal administrations, and 25 municipal leadership offices were to be established. The outcry has been furious and immediate, with senior Oromo and Afar politicians voicing their displeasure at what they perceive as irredentism by the SRS in their regions. Overhauling administrative units along the Oromia-SRS boundary was always likely to prove highly contentious, but the host of changes has triggered major protests in several towns within the SRS as well. With a year out from elections, the much-loathed Agjar appears to be continuing to consolidate his position as regional president.

  • Published February 21, 2025

    Much of the federal government's electoral agenda hinges on South West State President Abdiaziz Laftagareen. The regional leader, inserted into his position in Baidoa in December 2018, is the only remaining senior 'elected' non-Hawiye politician still aligned with the federal government. For much of 2024, Laftagareen played a careful balancing act between Addis-- upon which his security depends-- and Mogadishu-- the distributors of his political budget. Where he aligns himself in the coming months regarding the model for South West's long-overdue regional presidential elections could prove the final domino for the growing opposition against Villa Somalia's constitutional and electoral rewrites.

  • Published January 24, 2025

    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.

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