Somalia is not a "failed state." It is a caged one.

Three forces now hold the key to that cage—and none of them answer to Somalis.

Somaliland's secessionist project, presented to the world as a peaceful democratic exception, is being courted by Washington, London, and Tel Aviv as a strategic outpost on the Red Sea.

The Red Sea itself has become the new frontline, with Bab el-Mandeb at its center—and a secessionist enclave offered up as the price of recognition.

Türkiye's foothold in the Horn, meanwhile, is deepening by the year: the airport, the seaport, a military presence, and a 30% stake in Somali waters. Solidarity between Muslims—or a new colonialism wearing an Islamic cover?

In this episode of the Pambazuka Podcast, we sit down with Professor Abdi Ismail Samatar—professor of geography at the University of Minnesota, extraordinary professor at the University of Pretoria, and a member of the Pan-African Parliament. He later served in the Somali Senate. He has spent his life studying the country.

He refuses both easy stories: the Western one that blames ancient tribal hatred, and the nationalist one that blames the colonialists alone. The cage, he insists, was built by imperial design and local hands.

What does it mean to decolonize the Horn of Africa? And who will do it?

Listen to find out.

🎧 Episode out now. Subscribe, share, and join the struggle.

Pambazuka. Our news. Our voices. Our future.

#Somalia #Neocolonialism #Somaliland #RedSea #Turkey #PanAfricanism #HornOfAfrica #Pambazuka #Decolonize #AfricanSovereignty

On September 9, 1999, in the city of Sirte, Libya, African leaders adopted a declaration that would transform the Organization of African Unity into the African Union. Twenty-seven years later, we revisit that moment—not as mere history, but as a living battleground over Africa's destiny.

In commemorating the anniversary of the African Union, Pambazuka Podcast sits down with Moussa Ibrahim—former spokesperson of the Libyan government and student of Muammar Qaddafi's Pan-African project. Ibrahim takes us inside the revolutionary vision that birthed the AU: a united African currency (the Afro), a gold-backed reserve, a unified African army, and the now-forgotten dream of the South Atlantic Treaty Organization (SATO).

Why was Libya targeted with such ferocity in 2011? What happened to Libya's $100 billion in African investments? And as the US empire declines and the East rises, can Africa finally seize the moment to build the unity our liberation ancestors envisioned?

Ibrahim, who serves as Executive Secretary of the African Legacy Foundation in Johannesburg, offers a searing critique of Western influence on the continent. His recent writings explore how Western churches have hijacked African Christianity and the urgent need to develop an authentically African faith rooted in the continent's own history and values. The episode also draws on the host's own analysis of Libya's Pan-African project as a challenge to imperialism and what he terms "rational fascism", as well as leaked diplomatic correspondence revealing Western motivations—including concerns over Qaddafi's gold-backed currency plans—and the infamous "Harvard for Tyrants" exposé of Libya's revolutionary schools and training camps.

Essential listening for every Pan-Africanist.

Sources:

1. Essam Elkorghli, "Pan-Africanism with Libyan Characteristics: South-South Development vs. Imperialism & Rational Fascism," (https://www.anti-imperialists.com/magazine/pan-africanism-with-libyan-characteristics-south-south-development-vs-imperialism--rational-fasc/)
2. WikiLeaks – Hillary Clinton Email Archive, Email ID 6528 (https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/6528)
3. WikiLeaks – Hillary Clinton Email Archive, Email ID 12659 (https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12659)
4. Moussa Ibrahim, "How Western Churches Hijacked African Christianity—and How It's Fighting Back," Black Agenda Report (https://blackagendareport.com/how-western-churches-hijacked-african-christianity-and-how-its-fighting-back)
5. "Harvard for Tyrants," Foreign Policy, March 5, 2011 (https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/03/05/harvard-for-tyrants/)

In April 2023, a brutal war erupted in Khartoum and spread to engulf the whole of Sudan. It has since become one of the largest humanitarian crises on earth. Over 11 million people have been displaced. Less than 2 million have fled to neighboring countries. In a nation of 40 million, more than half the population—over 26 million people—now faces food shortages and scarcity. Famine has been declared in at least five regions, including the Nuba Mountains and Darfur. Reports of rape, sexual slavery, and other forms of sexual violence have been consistent since the first day of the war. Some battles have been massacres outright, as in Al-Fasher in October 2025, where the RSF laid siege to the city and slaughtered thousands.

The world calls this a "civil war"—a word that implies savagery without cause, Africans killing Africans for ancient tribal hatreds. The world calls Sudan the "forgotten war"—as if its erasure from headlines were an accident, not a choice.

In this episode, Pambazuka sits down with Mahder "Mahi" Habtemariam—Vice Chairperson of the Global Pan-African Movement, PhD candidate at Syracuse University, and an associate editor of the Pambazuka News—to refuse both framings.

Mahi traces the war's origins not to primordial conflict but to counter-revolution: the violent suppression of a popular uprising that, between 2018 and 2021, brought millions into the streets, built resistance committees in every neighborhood, and drafted a Revolutionary Charter for People's Power through bottom-up democratic deliberation. She shows how the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces—once partners in a 2021 military coup—turned on each other not over ideology but over which comprador faction would control Sudan's reintegration into global capitalism.

The episode maps the external actors who have sustained this destruction: the UAE's gold extraction and mercenary logistics, Europe's border externalization programs, the IMF's structural adjustments, the Abraham Accords' diplomatic blackmail, and the "Friends of Sudan" coalition that dresses up genocidal forces as potential democratic partners. Mahi explains why Egypt and Ethiopia became allies when the revolution threatened them, why France fears losing the Sahel, and why Russia, Ukraine, and the US all find clients in a war they claim to want ended.

Most importantly, the episode centers what the international media ignores: the Sudanese people themselves—journalists risking their lives, health workers operating under bombardment, teachers holding classes under trees, and the mutual aid networks keeping communities alive. Mahi argues that solidarity from the outside must mean supporting Sudanese autonomy, advocating an end to all foreign forces feeding the war, and learning from a revolution that proved, however briefly, that another Sudan is possible.

In the episode, we allude to the following sites:

• Mahi' article on Pambazuka News: https://www.pambazuka.org/Sudan-Crisis
• Atar Network for news on Sudan: https://atarnetwork.com/
• Sudanese Archive documenting the events in country: https://sudanesearchive.org/en/investigations/violence-against-protesters-in-khartoum-on-june-3-2019/

In 2026, the US State Department released a 95-page report branding Cuba "the Capital of 21st Century Communism"—a document that recycles Cold War tropes, smears decades of international solidarity as "subversion," and places longtime Cuba solidarity organizations on a watchlist alongside actual terrorist networks.

In this episode, Pambazuka Podcast is joined by Dr. Rosemari Mealy—educator, author of Fidel and Malcolm X: Memoirs of a Meeting, veteran of Radio Havana Cuba, and recipient of Cuba's Friendship Medal—to dissect what this report reveals about the current conjuncture of US imperial strategy.

Mealy traces the document's lineage back to the Church Commission's criminalization of the Venceremos Brigade in the 1970s, exposing how "lawfare" and "cognitive warfare" are being deployed to criminalize not just Cuba, but the global solidarity movements that sustain it. The conversation moves through Cuba's internationalist military and medical brigades in Africa, the targeting of Cuban doctors as "trafficked labour", and the AI-generated misinformation now flooding the information space.

Mealy also grapples with the internal contradictions of the Cuban revolution today: the battle of ideas between those who long for consumerist "modernity" and those building creative resistance through solar energy, municipal autonomy, and socialist reinvention. They discuss why religious freedom flourishes under Cuban socialism, how the Cuban Family Code advanced gender justice despite US-backed evangelical opposition, and what the Fidel centennial revealed about which nations still dare to stand against imperial bullying.

A conversation about memory, strategy, and why empire fears a small island that chooses solidarity over submission.

In August 2026, Jason Arday—a Black British sociologist, Cambridge professor, and celebrated symbol of academic "excellence"—was found dead at age 40, days after resigning from his post. His death followed a months-long media campaign that weaponized dismissed plagiarism allegations into a racialized spectacle, attacking his intelligence, appearance, disability, and very right to belong in the academy.

In this episode, Amber Murrey is joined by Professor Patricia Daley (University of Oxford; Chair, Pambazuka News Editorial Advisory Board) to discuss Daley's powerful essay: "The Jason Arday Tragedy: Not a Crisis of Black Intellectualism, but a Crisis of White Supremacy." You can read the essay on Pambazuka.org

Daley argues that Arday's ordeal was never about academic integrity—it was a private matter inflated into a collective assault on Black scholars everywhere. She traces how elite institutions like Cambridge hyper-visibilize Black achievement for PR while leaving structures of power untouched; how neoliberal academia commodifies Black intellectual labour; and how the far right exploits these contradictions to advance eugenicist narratives of Black incompetence.

The conversation moves from the UK's 1% Black professoriate and the toothless Race Equality Charter to the geopolitics of knowledge production—who a producer of legitimate knowledge is, who gets plagiarized with impunity, and why Black presence in white institutions remains a "crisis" for white supremacy. Daley reflects on her own decades navigating these spaces, offers hard-won advice to younger scholars, and closes with a case for solidarity, collective organization, and the enduring spirit of freedom.

A conversation about survival, academia, and what it means to be in the university but not of it.

Amber Murrey (the host) is a political geographer whose work examines how extractive and authoritarian power operate across material, digital and epistemic infrastructures, particularly in Cameroon. She is Associate Professor of Geography at Oxford.

For three decades, SEATINI (Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute) has been on the frontlines of a quiet revolution: teaching African trade negotiators to read the fine print, challenge power, and say "no" when the global economic order demands compliance.

In this episode, host Marc sits down with Jane Nalunga to reflect on SEATINI's origins at the 1996 WTO ministerial in Singapore—where scholars from the Global South realized African ministers were signing agreements they didn't fully understand—and traces how that mission evolved through battles over AGOA and the fight against lopsided economic partnership agreements.

With the multilateral trading system in turmoil, unilateral tariffs reshaping global commerce, and critical minerals becoming the new frontier of geopolitical contestation, the conversation turns sharply to the present. Jane argues that the same flawed premise keeps reappearing: that more trade automatically equals more development. From China's role in Africa to the African Continental Free Trade Area's unrealized promise, she makes the case that African governments must negotiate with power, not gratitude—and that the next generation of negotiators will need new tools for a new era.

A conversation about memory, strategy, and why the terms of trade still matter.

Jane Nalunga is the Executive Director of the Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI)

Marc Mealy is the Executive Vice President of Research and Chief Policy Officer of US-ASEAN Business Council

Every World Cup brings with it controversies about the beautiful sport: Who is the actual winner of the tournament (e.g., in 2018, was it France or Africa that won the World Cup)? Is football in Africa a part of a larger scheme of labor extraction? How is the sport a reflection of the relationship the Global South has with the North (or the North forces upon the South)?

In the aftermath of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, popular narratives about African football have once again centred on talent, opportunity and global success. Yet the tournament also highlighted a football economy shaped by imperialism, capitalism, racial inequality and uneven development. In this conversation with James Esson and Christian Ungruhe, co-authors with Paul Darby of African Football Migration, we discuss how young African players are recruited, valued and moved through academies, intermediaries and international labour markets. We also explore exploitation, human trafficking, gendered migration and what football reveals about Africa's place within the global political economy. African Football Migration is published by Manchester University Press and is available open access.

Title: Monetary Sovereignty, African Currency & The Crisis in Senegal (Episode #3)

Guest: Ndongo Samba Sylla

In recent months, Senegal has been engulfed with a critical political crisis revolving around the country's financial architecture and the current leadership of the country. In this conversation with the renowned Ndongo Sama Sylla, we discuss the fallout of PASTEF (Patriotes africains du Sénégal pour le travail, l'éthique et la fraternité [African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity]) and the larger meaning of monetary sovereignty for Africa. Sylla explains how the creation of an African currency can be the solution to the recurring problems imposed by imperialism through the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other coercive measures.

Sylla is the author and editor of numerous books, which can be found here: https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/author/ndongo-samba-sylla/

Pambazuka Podcast - anti-imperialism, Pan-Africanism and national liberation.

In this episode, Professor Horace Campbell (Syracuse University) joins Professor Patricia Daley at Oxford University for a conversation that cuts through the noise of mainstream media to reveal the tectonic shifts reshaping our world. Professor Campbell argues that the United States has suffered a strategic defeat in Iran—a defeat comparable to Britain's Suez crisis of 1956. This is not a temporary setback, but an erosion of US moral authority, diplomatic legitimacy, and—critically—the future of the petrodollar system. As Campbell explains, the unraveling of the petrodollar is a fundamental threat to US financial dominance, creating an opening for African nations to break from the CFA franc, the euro, and the US dollar—reviving Kwame Nkrumah's vision of an independent African currency. But this episode is about more than geopolitics. Campbell introduces the concept of "Black Joy" —not as mere celebration, but as the spiritual essence and organizational anchor that has sustained African peoples from enslavement through colonialism. It is the foundation for charting a new society beyond capitalism. 🎧

Tune in to understand:

• Why the US-Iran war marks a turning point in global power
• How the petrodollar's decline creates opportunities for African economic liberation
• What "Black Joy" means for building a future beyond imperialism and racial capitalism

#PambazukaPodcast #BlackJoy #Petrodollar #PanAfricanism #StrategicDefeat #Iran #GlobalAfrica #Delinking

Welcome to our first episode, Episode #0.

The associate editors and social media editor discuss Pambazuka News' objectives and goals from launching this podcast, what comes next in terms of forthcoming issues, focus of the podcast, and what to expect from the Pambazuka Podcast.

Pan-Africanism, anti-imperialism and liberation.