With over a decade of experience, Sahan provides expert security analysis, risk management, and policy advisory across the Horn of Africa—backed by unique access to key networks and real-time insights into regional threats.
Sahan supports good governance across the Horn of Africa by facilitating inclusive political processes, producing evidence-based insights, and guiding institutional reform through locally grounded, transparent approaches.
Sahan provides strategic geopolitical research and analysis on the Horn of Africa, examining external influence, political transitions, and regional security to support informed, evidence-based policymaking.
Sahan offers expert-led professional development seminars—both public and customized—equipping policymakers, diplomats, and analysts with practical tools and insights to address political, security, and geopolitical challenges in the Horn of Africa.
Since October 2020, the Somali Wire has led the way in reporting accurate and timely news from Somalia and beyond. Offering coverage of politics, security, economics and more, this bulletin remains one of the most widely cited and respected sources on Somalia.
Launched in August 2021, the Ethiopian Cable delves into Ethiopia’s complex political and socio-economic landscape. Published every Tuesday, each edition features key stories translated from Amharic and Tigrinya, providing context-rich coverage of current events.
The Horn Edition, launched in September 2023, casts a spotlight on developments across the wider Horn of Africa. Created in response to the conflict in Sudan, it provides a region-wide perspective through curated and summarised stories from Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, and Sudan.
7 Publications
6 Media Mentions
5 The Research and Evidence Facility (REF)
Gedo has long served as a useful barometer for the health of relations between Nairobi, Mogadishu, and Addis. Straddling the tri-border Mandera Triangle, the Mareehaan-dominated region of Jubaland has been a key staging post for Al-Shabaab's continued infiltration into Kenya and Ethiopia for years. And as such, both Nairobi and Addis have a vested stake in Jubaland as a security buffer zone against the jihadists, developing close ties with key political actors within Gedo and the southern Federal Member State-- which they helped co-establish in 2013. Over a decade later, with Hassan Sheikh Mohamud back at the helm in Mogadishu, the focus has returned to Gedo, as he has resorted to a well-known destabilising playbook by attempting —and failing —to wrest the Mareehaan into Villa Somalia's orbit. But amid the government's months-long campaign to destabilise Gedo, including seizing Garbahaarey and Luuq from control of Jubaland to carve out Darood tents for its rigged elections, Addis has remained silent-- until now.
After months of climbing tensions, Somalia's federal government and the so-called 'national opposition' are now tentatively engaged in dialogue. Last week, the second round of talks took place at Villa Somalia, with renewed hope for a breakthrough on a roadmap for the federal elections scheduled for May 2026. Meanwhile, the newly established National Dialogue Forum should further help diminish the potential for violence on the streets of Mogadishu. Yet, the bonhomie between President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and the coalition Somali Salvation Forum (SSF), led by former President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, cannot mask the fact that the road ahead will be fraught with hurdles as Villa Somalia continues to press ahead with its destabilising electoral agenda.
This week, Somaliland President Abdirahman 'Irro' travelled to Qatar for what was billed as a "historic visit," the first sitting leader of the unrecognised polity to be received in Doha. It certainly proved historic, but unlikely in the way that the Waddani administration hoped for, with the Qatari PM and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani springing a chastening press release following their meeting. The last lines of the Qatari PM's statement were particularly toe-curling for Hargeisa, asserting that "Qatar's belief that Somalia's future is built through openness and constructive communication among all its components, to ensure respect for the sovereignty and national unity of the Federal Republic of Somalia." Though the Somaliland government has tried to brush it off, it may prove a wake-up call for the complexities of navigating relations with Doha and others.
Somalia's latest plunging crisis has divided not only the usual domestic political actors but the 'international community' as well - if such a thing even exists anymore. Though nominally on the same page in regard to fighting Al-Shabaab, foreign perspectives on the diagnosis of Somalia's ills – and the appropriate remedies -- have proven radically different. And since Al-Shabaab's dramatic territorial advances beginning late February, many of the international responses to the country's escalating political and security emergencies have been working at cross purposes with one another. Meanwhile, Villa Somalia's interactions with foreign partners have continued to vacillate between blatant rent-seeking and hypernationalism.