Battered by drought and flooding, laid low by more than 30 years of civil war, as SOMALIA prepares to accede to a seat on the UN Security Council and joins the East African Community, we ask a senior member of the Prime Minister’s Office could the hostilities between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa over Somaliland descend into all -out war? Plus, why are so many Somali baby girls being named Istanbul? ABDIHAKIM AINTE, Director of Climate Change and Food Security talks to Africa Here and Now.

MALAWI’s government has embarked on an ambitious programme of digitisation and AI to improve service delivery and governance. We ask MARTIN KALIMA, Manager for Tech and Digital Transformation in Malawi for the Tony Blair Institute, how is digital transformation even possible when fewer than 20% of Malawians have access to electricity? Guest panellist, VERONIQUE EDWARDS, recalls the introduction of the Double Decker Bus and how locals were perplexed by the absence of an additional driver on the top deck.

VERONIQUE also draws our attention to the ongoing conflict in her home country, CAMEROON which is enduring an insurgency whose fighting groups have now splintered, and few know who is fighting for what. What started as a secession bid by Anglophone Cameroonians has now descended, Vero says, into chaos with millions of people too afraid to return to their villages.

PATRICK, with a very intermittent connection in Paris, manages to tell us about the mood in France as the far right look set to make advances in legislative elections and why that matters to Africa and to Africans. Even Les Blues are concerned.

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