Local News
Foreign Minister receives credentials copies as Algeria resumes its mission in Mogadishu
Abdisalam Abdi Ali told Ambassador Mohamed Alim that the Federal Government intends to build the relationship across political, economic, security and cultural cooperation, in the first formal step of an accreditation that will be completed with the President.
MOGADISHU (SONNA): Foreign Minister Abdisalam Abdi Ali has received copies of the Letters of Credence of the Ambassador of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria to Somalia, Mohamed Alim, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
The Minister welcomed the Ambassador and said the Federal Government is committed to strengthening bilateral relations between the two countries, naming political, economic, security and cultural cooperation as the areas in which it intends to do so.
The receipt of copies by the Foreign Minister is the first step of accreditation. The original Letters of Credence are presented to the Head of State, and until that ceremony takes place the Ambassador is not yet formally accredited, although the step allows him to begin his work with the Ministry.
Ambassador Alim arrived in Mogadishu last week and was received at Aden Adde International Airport by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Hamse Adan Hadow. Arab ambassadors serving in the capital and a representative of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation attended the reception, along with Somalia’s Ambassador to Algeria, Yusuf Ahmed Hassan, known as Yusuf Jeego. The arrival precedes the reopening of an Algerian embassy that last operated in the country in 1985.
The reopening completes an exchange that began on the Somali side. Somalia reopened its own embassy in Algiers in January 2025, and in August of that year the 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.
The four areas the Minister named indicate the shape the relationship is expected to take rather than any agreement reached. Algeria is among the larger members of both the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, holds a long established position in African diplomacy, and has its own extended experience of counterterrorism operations in the Sahel. Each of those touches a file Somalia is working on.
What has been established so far is narrower. An ambassador has arrived, the Ministry has received his credentials in copy, and a mission that has been closed for four decades is being reconstituted. The substance of the cooperation the Minister described will depend on what the two governments do once the embassy is open and functioning, and none of that has been announced.
