Algeria returns to Mogadishu as new ambassador arrives after four decades

MOGADISHU (SONNA): The new Ambassador of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria to Somalia, Mohamed Alim, has arrived in Mogadishu, where Algeria is preparing to reopen an embassy that last operated in the country in 1985.

The Ambassador was received at Aden Adde International Airport by Hamse Adan Hadow, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Federal Government of Somalia. Somalia’s Ambassador to Algeria, Yusuf Ahmed Hassan, known as Yusuf Jeego, was present, along with Arab ambassadors serving in Mogadishu and a representative of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

The Permanent Secretary said Somalia had extended an open hand to Algeria and to the embassy it is to open in the country. He said the two governments intend to build on the relationship from where it now stands, to protect the interests the two countries hold in common, and to work together on matters of shared concern.

Ambassador Alim thanked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the reception and thanked the Arab ambassadors and the representative of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation for coming to the airport to receive him. He said he expects to draw on their assistance in carrying out his duties, and that he looks forward to meeting them soon to discuss matters serving the concerns of their countries and of the Arab and Islamic world.

The ambassadors who attended offered assistance in establishing the mission. The representative of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation described Algeria’s presence in Mogadishu as a substantial addition, given the country’s standing in the Arab and Islamic grouping, and said the arrangement would benefit relations at both the wider level and the Somali one.

The reopening completes a movement that began on the Somali side. Somalia reopened its own embassy in Algiers in January 2025, and in August of that year the Somali Foreign Minister inaugurated new premises for the mission together with Algeria’s Secretary of State for African Affairs, Salma Bakhita Mansouri, who spoke of the depth of relations between the two countries and of Algeria’s intention to continue strengthening cooperation across all fields.

That exchange of missions sits within a wider pattern in the capital. Foreign governments that withdrew from Mogadishu during the collapse of the state have been returning in stages over the past decade, and the Arab ambassadors who assembled at the airport to receive a colleague are themselves the evidence of it. The Egyptian representative noted that his own embassy has maintained a permanent presence in the city since December.

Algeria brings particular weight to that group. It is among the larger members of both the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and its diplomacy has long combined an Arab role with an African one, a combination that maps onto Somalia’s own position in both spheres.

What follows now is the work of establishing the mission, and the Ambassador will present his credentials before formally taking up his duties. For Somalia, a country that has spent much of the past decade persuading foreign governments to return to its capital, an embassy reopening after forty years is a marker of how far that argument has carried. The measure of it will be what the two governments do with the channel once it is open.