The world has a vested interest in Somalia. Will it act to stop its collapse?

Frantz Fanon once quipped: “Africa is shaped like a revolver, and Congo is the trigger.”

More than 60 years later, I think the French philosopher’s assessment is only half true. It leaves out Somalia – which once held the crown as the “Switzerland of Africa”, but is now again on the verge of political disintegration.

To use a trigger, one must first ready the gun. Perhaps that was where Fanon should have added Somalia to his observation.

One of the reasons for Somalia’s pivotal role is its location. On one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, the locus of the Horn of Africa, Somalia lies on the Gulf of Aden, which, through the Bab-el-Mandeb and then the Red Sea, connects Europe and North America to east Africa, Asia and the Middle East. To avoid the Gulf of Aden would mean taking all imports and exports to and from the Middle East – including energy supplies – around the entire African continent to reach European and US markets.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/mar/24/in-somalia-the-gun-is-cocked-for-more-bloodshed-could-this-time-be-different