The agency officially launched the first phase of food distributions in both towns, targeting vulnerable and low-income households struggling with the effects of recurring drought, rising food prices, and declining livelihoods.

SoDMA said the initiative forms part of its nationwide relief programme aimed at supporting communities facing acute humanitarian needs, with priority given to families most severely affected by climate-related shocks.

The launch of the Abudwak distribution was attended by Member of Parliament Raysal Qorane, SoDMA Commissioner Mahmoud Moallin Abdulle, Galmudug Minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management Abdirahman Makawi, and officials from the Abudwak district administration.

The agency said food distributions in Beledweyne, the capital of Hiiraan, also began on Sunday and will continue over the coming days to reach additional beneficiaries.

SoDMA officials reaffirmed the agency’s commitment to expanding humanitarian assistance across Somalia, emphasizing that it will continue working closely with federal member states and humanitarian partners to deliver timely relief to drought-affected communities.

They said strengthening emergency response efforts remains essential as climate-related disasters continue to place millions of Somalis at risk of food insecurity.

Large parts of central Somalia, including Galgaduud and Hiiraan, have endured repeated drought cycles in recent years, leaving many pastoralist and farming communities struggling with water shortages, livestock losses, and reduced agricultural production.

Humanitarian agencies continue to warn that prolonged dry conditions, coupled with economic pressures, have increased the number of people requiring emergency food assistance across the country.

The post SoDMA Expands Emergency Food Aid to Drought-Hit Communities in Central Somalia+ PHOTOS appeared first on Kaab TV.

There is a moment in a lot of writing about Somali crisis where a person stops being a person and turns into a case. Nobody sets out to do this. It happens through habit, through the shape a report is expected to take before anyone sits down to write it, and through who gets asked what and who does not. Two tellings of the same nine days in one woman’s life make the shift visible.

The case file

The other day, a virtual field visit connected 48 donor representatives to 600,000 internally displaced persons in Baidoa. The Norwegian Refugee Council organised the call to show the hunger crisis in Somalia and the impact of its resilience programming in Baidoa and Kismayo.

It was heartbreaking to share the story of Yasmin, recently displaced from Hareera-jiife village in Bay region with five children. Three are her own, two belong to her late sister. Three of the children show signs of malnutrition and measles.

Yasmin has been in the camp for nine days and does not know where to take them for treatment. Her husband stayed behind to tend the farm, but the rains failed and the harvest will be poor. She walked for 72 hours to reach Baidoa, believing she would find assistance and protection there.

Yasmin and her children live under torn cloth and tent scraps. They have no food. The camp leader managed to find three kilos of rice, contributed by fellow residents. Yasmin has no relatives in Baidoa. She knows no one there.

The visit also highlighted nature-based solutions in Kismayo, ecosystem restoration, water harvesting, permagardens, helping communities strengthen food security and prepare for future shocks. While immediate humanitarian assistance is urgently needed to save lives, investment in resilience is equally urgent to help communities break the cycle of recurring crises. Thank you to all partners for joining the visit and for your continued commitment to supporting vulnerable communities across Somalia.

Nobody who wrote this meant Yasmin, her children, the camp, or Somalia itself any harm. But look at where the sentences point. Yasmin never speaks. Neither does anyone else named in this story, not her children, not the camp leader, not one of the human beings whose lives it claims to describe.

Every fact about her and the children in her care arrives already filtered through someone else’s eyes and folded into someone else’s summary, on its way to an audience of forty eight donor representatives she will never meet, deciding things about her life and the lives of everyone in that camp in a room none of them will ever enter. Her husband’s absence and the failed rains, the actual causes of her walk, get a sentence each and then vanish, background detail in a story whose real subject, by the end, is not Yasmin at all. It is a donor call, and by extension Somalia itself, reduced to a case still waiting to be funded. The detail that should have mattered most, that a camp leader with almost nothing organised his neighbours to find three kilos of rice for a woman they had never met, gets one line and is never returned to. It reads like a nice touch. It should have been the finding.

FURTHER READING: Conflict and Hunger Deepen Humanitarian Crisis in Somalia’s South West State

Donor writing has a shape to it, and Yasmin’s story was poured into that shape rather than the other way around. A number up front to establish scale. One person, chosen and arranged to carry emotional weight. Then a pivot into the vocabulary that actually moves institutional money: resilience, nature-based solutions, breaking cycles.

The malnutrition, the measles, the torn cloth, these details survive the edit because they do the work of moving a donor audience toward continued funding. The rice barely survives it, maybe because a community already feeding itself is a slightly awkward fact for an appeal built on the premise that outside help is what is missing.

The last line gives it away. Thank you to partners, for joining the call and for their continued commitment. A piece written for Yasmin would not end there. A piece written for the Somali public she belongs to would not end there either.

Somali people turn up constantly in writing like this, as the 600,000, as Yasmin, as the family in the camp, cited and described and counted. What they almost never do is speak as the authority on their own lives. Nobody asks Yasmin, on the page, what she thinks happened to her and why.

Yasmin’s crossing

Yasmin left Hareera-jiife on foot. She does not remember exactly which day, only that it took three nights and most of three days, and that by the second night her youngest was crying from thirst in a way she had not heard before.

“I was not walking to Baidoa,” she says. “I was walking away from what the rain did not do.”

Her husband stayed on the farm. Somebody had to, in case the harvest came. It has not, not yet, and she does not expect it will. Before she left, her younger sister died and left two children with nowhere else to go. Yasmin did not weigh this decision. There was no decision to weigh. “They are mine now,” she says. “That is not a question anyone asks in my family.”

She arrived in Baidoa nine days ago knowing no one. Three of the five children show signs of malnutrition, one has measles, and every one of those nine days has gone into trying to find out where a woman with no money and no relative in the city takes a sick child.

What found her instead was the camp leader. He had nothing of his own to give, but within a day of her arrival he had gathered three kilos of rice from families who already had almost nothing, and brought it to a stranger.

This did not come from nowhere. It is Danwadaagaha, the Somali architecture of mutual obligation that was working long before any programme arrived proposing to build resilience into a community that had never stopped practicing it. Nobody trained the camp leader for this. Nobody funded it. It happened because it is what people owe each other, and it reached Yasmin faster than anything organised from outside the camp did.

What she says she needs is not complicated. Treatment for three children. Word of whether her husband is safe and whether the rains will come next season. And, though she would not put it this way herself, some acknowledgment that what caught her when she arrived with nothing was not a donor programme. It was her neighbours, most of them also displaced, most of them also with almost nothing.

What this version is for

This telling exists to record what happened to Yasmin the way she understands it, for a reader who wants the truth of her situation rather than a reason to keep funding a call center full of donors. There is no funding case to build, so nothing needs to be shaped around persuading anyone of anything. The rice can sit at the center of the story because nothing here requires it to bow to a resilience narrative written for somebody else’s report.

The audience is different too, and that changes what the writing has to answer for. Aadmi writing is built for a Somali public first, not only for outsiders looking in. Danwadaagaha does not need explaining to a Somali reader the way it would to a donor. It can be named and left to carry its own weight. And writing for that audience raises the stakes in a way donor writing never has to face: Yasmin, or her community, might actually read this. That is a different kind of responsibility than writing for a funder who will never meet her and has no way of knowing whether the story was fair.

Reading both through the Aadmi lens

Aadmi gives a working way to tell dehumanization and humanization apart in practice, and it is worth spelling out rather than leaving it implied.

Dehumanization is not about unkind words. It shows up in structure. A person becomes an object in a story rather than its subject when she is spoken about in the third person with none of her own reasoning quoted. When her suffering is folded into a statistic before it is ever individualised, so she arrives on the page already standing in for 600,000 others. When her needs are named by the institution reporting on her instead of by her.

When the community capacity that actually reached her first, the neighbours who fed her before any outside actor did, gets a sentence and nothing more, while the institution’s own programming gets paragraphs. And when the piece signs off by thanking the room it was written for, rather than closing on the person it claims to be about. The case file hits every one of these marks. Not because anyone meant harm. Because donor reporting is built to do exactly this.

Humanization asks for something specific too. It asks the writer to listen first, to let a person’s own explanation of what happened to her carry the story rather than decorate a narrator’s summary of it. It asks that her reasoning about her needs, her family, her choices, be reported in her own terms rather than translated into the language of an outside programme. And it asks that existing capacity inside her own community, in this case a camp leader collecting rice from people who have almost nothing, be treated as the actual news rather than a footnote to somebody else’s intervention.

Yasmin’s crossing tries to meet that standard. She reasons in her own voice. Her decision about her sister’s children needs no outside explanation because it makes complete sense inside her own family’s logic. The rice is named as the system that worked, not a charming aside.

The two tellings are not simply gentler and harsher versions of the same story. One treats Yasmin as evidence in an institution’s case to its funders. The other treats her as the person who knows what happened to her, and treats her neighbours’ response as the actual event worth reporting.

How Danwadaagaha was administered, organized and programmed before the civil war, 1991.

What the camp leader did in Baidoa did not appear from nowhere, and it did not appear because Somalis are naturally generous in a vague, cultural-stereotype sort of way. It came out of a system that Somali society administered, organised and ran on a schedule long before anyone proposed resilience building as a new idea.

Administration sat with elders and lineage authorities operating under xeer, the customary law governing obligation between kin groups.

Xeer set out, with real precision, who owed what to whom and under what circumstances, and how disputes over those obligations got resolved. Diya-paying groups, the kinship units bound to share liability and support in death, injury or crisis, had recognised leadership and clear rules, not loose sentiment. When a member of the group faced catastrophe, whether debt, death or displacement, what the group gave was not charity offered at anyone’s discretion. It was owed.

Organisation ran along lines of lineage and residence, through reer and jilib groupings that determined who belonged to which support network and what that network was on the hook for.

That structure was flexible enough to stretch toward strangers in shared hardship too, which is exactly what happened when residents of the Baidoa camp, most of them unrelated to Yasmin, folded her into their support within a day of her arrival. That is not a departure from Danwadaagaha. It is the system doing what it has always done, reorganising around new arrivals the way it has reorganised around births, deaths, marriages and disasters for generations.

Programming is the part outsiders miss most often, because it does not look like a programme from the outside. Qaraan, the collective levies raised for weddings, funerals, debts and emergencies, ran on a schedule and a formula that the group understood, with social consequences for anyone who failed to contribute. This was social protection with rules, thresholds and a delivery mechanism, running as systematically as any donor logframe, except administered by Somali people for Somali people, with no proposal document required to justify its existence.

Seen this way, the rice gathered for Yasmin was not an improvised kindness sitting outside any system. It was delivery, under a system a camp leader was administering in a role elders have filled for generations, extended through obligation to a person in acute need, funded through the same collective-levy logic that has paid for funerals and dowries and debts for as long as the institution has existed.

The difference between this and the Baxnaano cash transfer or the BRCIS activities on the same call is not that one is organic and the other planned. Both are planned. The difference is which planning gets written up as a programme worth studying, and which gets compressed into a sentence about a kind camp leader and left there.

The line between narrated and narrating

Set the two tellings side by side and tone is not really where they diverge. Both were written by people who meant well. Where they diverge is who holds the pen inside the sentence, who the sentence answers to, and what counts as the finding.

In the case file, Yasmin gets described, counted, and thanked by proxy, through the thanking of the partners who came to hear about her. Her own reasoning about her displacement, her own sense of what she needs, the mutual aid that actually reached her first: all of it is present, technically, but minor, sitting in the background of a piece whose argument is really about a programme. The camp leader’s rice gets a sentence. The resilience work gets the weight.

In her own telling, that balance flips. Yasmin narrates her own crossing. Her explanation of the rain, her decision about her sister’s children, her own words about what she needs, these carry the story rather than decorate it. The rice stops being an anecdote and becomes the point: proof that a Somali system of mutual obligation was already running, at full capacity, before anyone from outside arrived.

Somali people are narrated constantly, in numbers, case studies, donor updates, appeals. They become the object a narrative is about rather than the subject a narrative belongs to. Fixing that is not a matter of warmer adjectives layered onto the same structure. It is a matter of who organises the story, what gets to count as the finding, and who the writing is finally answerable to. Change those three things and the same nine days produce a different story, not because the facts changed, but because the person telling it finally gets to be its author.

A pattern, not an exception

None of this is one writer’s failing. It is the standard register of donor communications, partner updates, and most of the field reporting produced about Somalia by international organisations, repeated so often it no longer registers as a choice. It reads as neutral. That is exactly the problem. The same way of reporting, aggregate number, individualised case, thank you to partners, shows up across appeals, sit-reps and highlight posts from one crisis to the next, attached to different names in different regions, structure untouched.

When an entire sector narrates a population this consistently as evidence for somebody else’s funding case, the effect outlasts any single post. It trains donors, some journalists, and eventually Somali institutions themselves to expect suffering to be marshalled as proof, and Somali voices to surface only when they are useful to someone else’s fundraising argument. That is dehumanization running as convention rather than intention, which is exactly what makes it hard to spot from inside the sector producing it, and exactly what makes it durable.

Fixing this is not about softer language layered onto the same donor format. It means changing what the reporting is actually for. Writing built to keep a donor funding a programme will always subordinate a person’s own telling of her/his life to that funding case, no matter how much compassion sits on the surface of it. Writing built to inform a public, Somali and otherwise, about what is actually happening and who is actually responding, can put the person and the institutions already doing the work at the center, because it answers to a different purpose altogether. The focus has to move from proving a programme’s necessity to getting the reality right. The audience has to grow past a room of donor representatives to include the people the story is actually about.

None of this argues against keeping donors informed. It argues against building every telling of Somali life around the shape of a donor appeal, as if that were the only form crisis reporting could take.

______________

Wilo Abdulle is a gender equality, human rights, and social inclusion expert and independent Journalist

The post When Somali People Become a Narrative Instead of a Subject appeared first on Kaab TV.

The latest violence follows days of rising tensions over agricultural land in the Janaale area, where competing claims to banana plantations and surrounding farmland have intensified.

On 9 July, Biyamaal elders, women, and youth staged a protest in the KM50 area of Lower Shabelle, accusing members of the Hawiye clan—particularly the Habargidir and Abgaal sub-clans—of encroaching on what they described as ancestral Biyamaal land.

“Our farmlands are under attack. These are lands where our ancestors are buried and where our wells are located,” one elder, who identified himself only as Abdirahman, told protesters.

During the demonstration, protesters displayed copies of the Quran alongside AK-47 rifles, warning that if appeals through religion failed to stop what they described as land grabbing, they would defend their land by force.

Suspected Men Detained Over Alleged Land Grabbing

The protest came two days after Biyamaal militia members detained several individuals in the KM50 area whom they accused of surveying land for illegal acquisition.

The group reportedly included foreign nationals said to possess professional land surveying expertise.

The detainees were presented publicly on 8 July together with a vehicle, electricity generators, and surveying equipment.

Biyamaal elders alleged that the group had intended to survey land in the Deexda area, stretching between Marka, KM50, and the coastal areas of Jasiira and Gendershe—territory they claim has recently become the target of coordinated land seizures.

Fighting Spreads Around Janaale

Residents told Kaab TV that the fighting, which began on 4 July, continued for three consecutive days. They said Biyamaal fighters, responding to attacks they blamed on Habargidir militia, burned banana plantations in the Janaale area during the clashes.

Habargidir elders, however, accused Biyamaal fighters of attacking farms belonging to their community and said three people were killed in the violence.

Further clashes were reported on 6 July along the road between Janaale and the regional capital, Marka, as the conflict continued to spread.

The fighting has involved small arms as well as armed pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns.

The Federal Government of Somalia has not publicly commented on the clashes or announced any mediation efforts.

Meanwhile, sources close to both communities told Kaab TV that elders from the Biyamaal and Habargidir clans have separately sought mediation from Al-Shabaab, claiming they turned to the militant group after government authorities failed to intervene effectively.

The insecurity has disrupted farming and commercial activity in the Janaale area, with residents saying many farmers and traders are now unable to safely access agricultural land due to the ongoing violence.

The post Lower Shabelle: Biyamaal Clan Allege Land Seizures as Deadly Clashes with Habargidir Escalate appeared first on Kaab TV.

The earthquake measured 5.1 on the Richter scale and occurred at approximately 6:53 a.m. local time, according to data published by Volcano Discovery, a platform that tracks seismic activity around the world.

Preliminary reports indicate that the quake’s epicenter was located offshore in the Gulf of Aden, roughly 152 kilometers from Somalia’s northern coastline and about 179 kilometers north of the Bari region settlement of El Dibir.

Despite its relatively strong magnitude, experts described the earthquake as a deep-seated seismic event, which often reduces the intensity of shaking felt at the surface.

As a result, no immediate reports of injuries, property damage, or significant ground shaking have emerged from nearby coastal communities.

Authorities and disaster-monitoring agencies have not issued any tsunami warnings, and there have been no indications of threats to coastal populations in Somalia or neighboring countries bordering the Gulf of Aden.

The Gulf of Aden lies within a geologically active region where the African, Arabian, and Somali tectonic plates interact. While earthquakes in the area are not uncommon, most occur beneath the seabed and rarely cause significant damage on land.

The earthquake comes at a time when Somalia is experiencing a range of weather-related challenges, including heavy rainfall, localized flooding, and strong winds affecting parts of the country.

However, experts note that earthquakes are caused by tectonic activity and are not directly linked to seasonal weather patterns or climate conditions.

Authorities continue to monitor the situation, although no adverse impacts have been reported as of Thursday morning.

The post 5.1-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Gulf of Aden Near Somali Coast appeared first on Kaab TV.

Residents reported widespread traffic disruptions as floodwaters inundated key roads and intersections, making several routes impassable. Public transportation services were affected, while many commuters struggled to reach workplaces, schools, markets, and government offices due to the rising water levels.

The flooding once again exposed Mogadishu’s longstanding infrastructure challenges, particularly the city’s inadequate drainage system. In many neighborhoods, rainwater accumulated rapidly as drainage channels failed to cope with the volume of water, causing streets to turn into temporary waterways.

Urban planning and environmental experts say the recurring floods are being driven by a combination of factors, including increasingly intense rainfall linked to climate change, insufficient stormwater drainage infrastructure, rapid urban expansion, and blocked waterways. These conditions have made the city more vulnerable to flooding during seasonal rains.

Experts note that even moderate rainfall can cause flooding in parts of Mogadishu when drainage systems become overwhelmed or clogged with debris. The lack of a comprehensive urban water management system has allowed floodwaters to repeatedly disrupt economic activity and public services, particularly in low-lying areas of the city.

Residents have renewed calls for authorities to invest in modern drainage networks, road rehabilitation projects, and flood mitigation measures to reduce the impact of future storms. Many argue that long-term infrastructure improvements are essential to protecting lives, property, and economic activity in Somalia’s rapidly growing capital.

The latest flooding comes as Somalia continues to face the broader effects of climate variability, with extreme weather events increasingly affecting communities across the country. Local authorities are monitoring the situation and assessing the extent of the damage caused by the recent downpours.

The post Heavy Flooding Paralyzes Parts of Mogadishu Following Days of Torrential Rain {PHOTOS} appeared first on Kaab TV.

Residents have reported significant disruptions to transportation and daily activities as floodwaters submerged key routes.

Experts say the recurrent flooding in Mogadishu is driven by a combination of increasingly intense rainfall linked to climate change, inadequate urban drainage systems, rapid urban expansion, and blocked waterways.

Even moderate rains can inundate parts of the city when drainage channels are unable to cope with the volume of water.

The post PHOTO NEWS: Floodwaters Swamp Mogadishu Streets After Heavy Weekend Rains appeared first on Kaab TV.

In South West State, communities are facing what residents describe as a double crisis of conflict and food insecurity.

Humanitarian concerns have intensified as fighting continues across the region between forces aligned with the Federal Government of Somalia and the local Rahanweyne forces of the Southwest State, which remains loyal to former South West President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed “Laftagareen”.

The conflict has triggered a new wave of displacement in and around Baidoa, a city already struggling with drought, hunger and overcrowded displacement camps.

Among those displaced is Ibrahim Abdi Aliyow, who fled his rural village in Bay region with his wife and five children a year ago after drought destroyed their livelihoods.

Having settled in a displacement camp on the outskirts of Baidoa, he has now been forced to flee once again because of the fighting.

“It is tough. Gunfire hit our makeshift house the other night and we fled,” he said, describing clashes that erupted in parts of Baidoa on Sunday and Monday this week.

According to the latest assessment by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), nearly one in three Somalis is experiencing critical food insecurity.

The IPC defines famine as a situation in which at least one in five households faces an extreme lack of food, leading to starvation, acute malnutrition and increased mortality.

“The humanitarian context in Somalia is worsening faster than we originally projected and expected,” said George Conway, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official in Somalia, speaking last month about the country’s deteriorating conditions.

Aid agencies have identified Buurhakaba district as one of the areas of greatest concern.

The United Nations has warned of a real and credible risk of famine in the district if assistance does not increase urgently.

“The assistance is needed most urgently in South West State, where we have confirmed a real and credible risk of famine in Buurhakaba district,” Conway said.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has also raised concerns over growing shortages of medical supplies used to treat children suffering from acute malnutrition.

UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said healthcare services are becoming increasingly strained due to supply chain disruptions linked to instability in the Middle East.

Although Somalia has endured recurring drought since 2024, the current Gu rainy season has brought only limited relief to some areas.

Humanitarian agencies warn that rainfall remains insufficient to reverse the crisis and that many communities continue to depend on emergency water deliveries.

“Given the drought situation and the drying up of water points, a lot of communities are reliant on water trucking,” Conway said. “In some locations, we’ve seen water prices for water trucking triple over the course of the past month.”

Access to vulnerable communities has also become more difficult.

The main road connecting Mogadishu and Baidoa remains highly insecure, with large sections under the influence of Al-Shabaab militants.

Journalists and residents have reported a rise in militant attacks along the route, further complicating the delivery of humanitarian aid.

For many displaced families, assistance has yet to arrive.

Habiba Nurow, 56, and her six children arrived at a displacement camp near Baidoa several months ago after losing her livestock and livelihood. She says conditions continue to deteriorate.

“No aid has come. The children are too weak to stand and the food has run out,” she said.

“We hope and we pray that someone will hear our cries and that aid will reach us.”

As conflict, drought and food shortages converge across South West State, humanitarian agencies warn that without immediate assistance, thousands of vulnerable families could face even greater suffering in the months ahead.

The post Conflict and Hunger Deepen Humanitarian Crisis in Somalia’s South West State appeared first on Kaab TV.

One of the hardest-hit areas was the busy KM4 junction and the road leading to Aden Adde International Airport, where rising water levels submerged sections of the roadway and traffic control barriers. The flooding made it difficult for vehicles to move through the area, causing significant delays and congestion.

The rainfall once again exposed Mogadishu’s longstanding drainage challenges. Large sections of the city lack a modern and effective stormwater drainage system, resulting in frequent flooding whenever heavy rains occur. As a result, water often accumulates on major roads, disrupting transportation and limiting access to key parts of the city.

The downpour also affected commercial activities and public transportation services, with many residents reporting difficulties reaching workplaces, markets, and other essential destinations. Some motorists were forced to take alternative routes, while others remained stranded in flood-affected areas.

Residents expressed frustration over the recurring floods that accompany seasonal rains, arguing that the problem has persisted for years despite repeated calls for improved urban infrastructure. Many warned that continued inaction could lead to greater economic losses and increased risks to public safety.

Citizens have urged the Banadir Regional Administration and relevant government agencies to accelerate efforts to modernize the city’s drainage network and implement long-term flood mitigation measures.

Urban planners and local residents have frequently highlighted the need for expanded drainage channels, road rehabilitation projects, and improved flood management systems to reduce the impact of heavy rainfall on the rapidly growing capital.

Mogadishu typically experiences flooding during periods of intense seasonal rainfall, particularly in low-lying neighborhoods where inadequate drainage infrastructure allows water to accumulate quickly.

The recurring problem has become one of the city’s most pressing urban development challenges, affecting transportation, businesses, and residential communities alike.

The post Flooded Roads Bring Parts of Mogadishu to a Standstill After Heavy Downpour appeared first on Kaab TV.

The UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher, said the funding was released from the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to support the most vulnerable communities affected by drought and food shortages.

“The window to prevent famine in Somalia is rapidly closing,” Fletcher warned, stressing the need for immediate humanitarian intervention.

According to the United Nations, nearly six million people in Somalia are experiencing acute food insecurity, while approximately 1.9 million are facing emergency levels of hunger and require urgent humanitarian assistance.

The emergency funding will be used to provide life-saving aid, including food assistance, nutrition support, healthcare services, and access to clean water. More than 640,000 people are expected to benefit from the program.

UN officials said the humanitarian situation has continued to deteriorate due to a combination of food insecurity, widespread malnutrition, recurring climate shocks, and limited access to essential services.

Humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned that Somalia remains vulnerable to famine-like conditions as drought, conflict, displacement, and funding shortages continue to place millions of people at risk.

The latest funding announcement comes as aid organizations intensify calls for greater international support to prevent a repeat of past famine crises that have devastated communities across Somalia.

The post UN Allocates $10 Million in Emergency Aid to Prevent Famine in Somalia appeared first on Kaab TV.

For generations, pastoralists across the Horn of Africa could read the sky with remarkable precision. They knew when the rains would arrive, when grasslands would recover and when it was time to move.

Mobility was not disorder. It was a sophisticated survival system, refined over centuries in one of the world’s most unforgiving environments.

Today, those rhythms are breaking down.

Across Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and parts of Djibouti, communities that once adapted to climatic uncertainty are confronting something fundamentally different: not a single drought, not a single flood, but a persistent state of environmental disruption in which recovery periods are becoming shorter, shocks more frequent and livelihoods increasingly fragile.

The Horn of Africa has always lived at the mercy of climatic extremes. Drought and flood are woven into its history.

What is unprecedented is the speed with which these shocks now arrive, their growing intensity and the inability of societies to recover before the next crisis begins.

Multiple compounding weather extremes have triggered a massive regional crisis of climate-induced displacement, decimating livestock and stripping communities of their primary means of economic independence.

Environmental emergencies that once appeared as episodic disasters have become permanent features of political life.

Recent studies show that deeply entrenched power dynamics and institutional failures frequently override technical gains, as state interventions often restrict traditional pastoralist mobility rather than protecting it.

Climate change, in other words, is no longer simply an environmental story. It is a story about governance.

The Collapse of Old Rhythms

As governments prepare for another uncertain June-to-September season, meteorological agencies have warned of below-average rainfall across significant parts of the Greater Horn. Such forecasts once concerned farmers, pastoralists and aid organizations.

Today they provoke anxiety in presidential palaces, finance ministries and military headquarters.

Because another failed rainy season no longer means only smaller harvests. It means fresh waves of displacement into already crowded urban centers. It means new competition over shrinking water sources and grazing corridors. It means another test of whether governments can persuade citizens that the state remains capable of protecting them.

The scale of the challenge is staggering.

According to assessments by the Food Security Information Network and the Global Network Against Food Crises, more than 96 million people across crisis-affected regions face acute food insecurity.

That figure is not merely humanitarian. It is political.

It represents millions of citizens measuring the promises of the state against the realities of survival.

Across East Africa, temperatures have risen significantly above historical averages. Rainfall patterns have become increasingly erratic. Longer dry periods exhaust crops and livestock before sudden cloudbursts unleash destructive floods that wash away homes, roads and fertile topsoil.

Even years of “normal” rainfall can conceal disaster. The problem is no longer simply how much rain falls. It is when it falls, where it falls and whether communities have the resilience to absorb its consequences.

The result is not a cycle of disaster and recovery.

It is a cycle of attrition. The traditional distinction between drought and flood has itself begun to collapse. Communities increasingly experience both. Often within the same year.

Scientists describe these events as compound climate extremes. Citizens experience them more simply.

First the rains fail. Then they destroy. Few groups understand this transformation more intimately than pastoralists.

For centuries, mobility functioned as a form of insurance. Families moved livestock across vast territories according to negotiated social arrangements that distributed risk and protected communities during difficult seasons. Flexibility was resilience.

But shrinking pasturelands, declining vegetation cover and accelerating desertification have steadily eroded those traditional systems.

The devastating drought that gripped much of the Horn between 2020 and 2022 exposed just how fragile they had become.

Entire herds vanished.

For pastoral households, livestock are not merely economic assets. They are savings accounts, social status, marriage prospects, inheritance and future security combined into one.

When herds disappear, livelihoods disappear with them. And when livelihoods disappear repeatedly, people stop migrating seasonally. They relocate permanently.

The Horn’s cities have become repositories for environmental distress.

When Environmental Stress Becomes Political

Mogadishu. Baidoa. Addis Ababa. Nairobi, are increasingly absorbing populations displaced not by a single catastrophe but by the cumulative collapse of rural livelihoods.

Urban growth has accelerated faster than infrastructure can keep pace. Water systems strain under rising demand. Schools become overcrowded. Health services weaken.

Informal settlements spread outward faster than roads, drainage systems or municipal authorities can reach them.

These neighborhoods are not devoid of governance. But governance there is often improvised. Clan elders mediate disputes. Religious leaders coordinate assistance. Community committees organize security.

In some areas particularly in Somalia, non-state actors provide services and protection that governments struggle to deliver.

The state’s retreat is rarely dramatic. More often, it is administrative. It becomes visible through quiet substitution. People increasingly rely on alternative structures not because they reject the state, but because those structures function when formal institutions do not.

That reality points toward the deeper challenge confronting governments across the region.

The crisis is not simply environmental. It is one of legitimacy. Political authority ultimately depends upon practical performance.

Citizens may disagree with governments, criticize leaders or contest policies. But states derive legitimacy from their ability to provide a minimum level of security, predictability and economic opportunity.

Climate shocks undermine all three.

Repeated crop failures weaken economic confidence. Competition over resources strains social cohesion. Displacement complicates service delivery and political representation. Every failed response widens the gap between state promises and lived reality.

Research increasingly suggests that climate change alone does not determine political outcomes. Countries with stronger institutions, more responsive governance systems and sustained investment in agriculture and infrastructure tend to absorb environmental shocks more effectively.

The Future of Power in a Warming Horn

The implication is straightforward.

Climate change does not automatically produce instability. Poor governance does.

A farmer whose harvest fails repeatedly begins asking what citizenship guarantees. A pastoralist denied access to water through formal mechanisms turns toward kinship networks instead. Communities under pressure narrow their circles of trust.

Local loyalties become more important than national institutions. The social contract frays from the margins inward. For decades, humanitarian assistance helped cushion these pressures.

Aid evolved beyond emergency relief. In many fragile states, such as Somalia – it effectively became an external subsidy for governance systems unable to meet rising demands.

Food distributions prevented famine. Cash-transfer programs sustained vulnerable households.

Donor financing filled gaps that governments could not. That model is now under strain.

Global crises have multiplied. International aid budgets face increasing pressure. Donor fatigue has become increasingly visible.

Meanwhile, climate disruption has ceased to be temporary.

Safety-net systems designed for occasional emergencies are confronting populations living through continuous uncertainty.

With millions of people facing structural, protracted crises globally, hyper-prioritization has forced a restrictive retreat toward only the narrowest definitions of “life-saving” aid, leaving millions exposed to continuous instability

The gap between need and capacity continues to widen. As formal support weakens, alternative economies emerge. Charcoal production expands across increasingly fragile landscapes.

Control over productive wells acquires strategic value, experts say. Scarcity becomes monetized. Environmental stress becomes revenue. Water itself becomes power.

Yet much of the region’s security architecture remains organized around traditional threats.

Counterterrorism in a Warming World

Counterterrorism continues to dominate policy discussions, security budgets and diplomatic engagement.

Those concerns remain important. But the emerging threat landscape is broader. The frameworks designed to govern war were never built to govern environmental collapse.

Military operations can disrupt insurgent networks. They cannot restore rainfall. They cannot regenerate pasturelands. They cannot rebuild trust when citizens conclude that institutions are unable to shield them from preventable suffering.

The Horn of Africa is therefore not experiencing an endless succession of unrelated emergencies. It is entering a new political era.

From the devastating floods of 2019 that contributed to locust infestations, to the record-breaking drought between 2020 and 2022, to the El Niño floods that followed, and now renewed warnings of rainfall deficits, each crisis has layered upon the last.

The cumulative effect is transforming the relationship between citizens and the state. Disaster has ceased to be exceptional. It has become structural.

The central question confronting governments across the Horn is no longer how to survive the next climate emergency.

It is whether they can govern societies increasingly shaped by the certainty that another one is always approaching.

In the Horn of Africa, the climate crisis is becoming a crisis of political authority itself.

And in the decades ahead, the legitimacy of governments may depend less on the wars they wage than on whether they can help their citizens endure the weather.

Abdi Guled is a Horn of Africa analyst and journalist focusing on political risk, armed groups and geostrategic competition in the region.

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