West Africa, Horn, MENA: Links for 1/30/2026

News and analysis from Dakar to Riyadh.

You can read last week’s roundup here.

Sahel and West Africa

Le Monde’s Benjamin Roger covers the Malian junta’s growing alliance with Turkiye. Roger notes that Turkiye already had considerable “soft power” in Mali (through schools, NGOs, etc.) before the junta took over in 2020; after the authorities expelled French forces, Turkiye (along with Russia) took on a growing role in security assistance, weapons sales, and more.

At DW, Mahamadou Kane reports on the effects of long-term school closures in Bankass, central Mali.

Burkina Faso’s military-led government has dissolved the country’s political parties, echoing a similar move in Mali in 2025.

The international airport at Niger’s capital Niamey was attacked on the night of January 28-29. The military authorities blamed France, Benin, and Cote d’Ivoire, while thanking Russian soldiers for their support.

Aidan Huang at Africa Is a Country: “In Chad, domestic labor between Chinese employers and local workers unfolds in private spaces where rules are missing and conflict fills the gap.”

Meanwhile, Chadian President Mahamat Déby met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris yesterday (January 29) to discuss the future of bilateral relations after Chad terminated a military agreement last year.

Benin held municipal elections on January 7 and legislative elections on January 11. The ruling coalition won all the seats (more here).

Chris Ewokor for the BBC: “Nigerian Officers to Face Trial over Coup-Plot Allegations.” I wrote a bit about the coup plot and its ramifications here.

Olamilekan Okebiorun for Business Insider: “Nigeria Secures First-Ever Formal Labour Recruitment Deal with Saudi Arabia.” The agreement aims to shift recruitment from “informal middlemen” to state-regulated channels, and to enforce standards around working conditions and terms. Note that the New York Times has been doing a series on scandals and reported abuses affecting East African workers in Saudi Arabia (here is one article from that series).

Elnathan John reflects on the influencer IShowSpeed’s trip to Africa: “He did more for African tourism (once you remove the really embarrassing Nigerian part of it) than any tourism board in Africa in the past few years.”

Horn of Africa

MSF:

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was recently granted access to El Fasher, Sudan, to assess the current situation of the civilians and health facilities. The visit came as the North Darfur city is now under the control of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who seized it last October after a prolonged siege and having committed atrocities.

On 15 January, our team spent four hours in El Fasher, under the constant supervision of security officials. We saw destroyed areas, largely emptied of the people who used to live there.

[…]

Our visit, the first one since we stopped working in El Fasher in August 2024 and Zamzam camp in February 2025, was too limited to allow us to get more than a glimpse of the city and situation. Yet this glimpse is a grim reminder of the sheer scale of the destruction that took place in El Fasher, whose residents have been wiped out.

It echoes the stories of mass killings, torture, kidnapping and other violence in El Fasher and along the escape roads, shared by the patients we have been treating over the last months in Tawila, some 60 kilometres away.

The Sudanese Armed Forces say they have “opened a road leading to South Kordofan province’s Dilling town,” disrupting an RSF siege and “gaining control over major supply lines.”

Al Jazeera: “Clashes Between Government Troops and Tigrayan Forces Erupt in Ethiopia.” Flights to northern Ethiopia are being canceled.

Ragip Soylu and Bashir Mohamed Caato at Middle East Eye: “Turkey Deploys F-16 Jets to Somalia As It Strengthens Economic Ties.”

Middle East and North Africa

Sofiane Al-Kamri for the Carnegie Endowment’s Sada journal: “Sub-Saharan African Migrants in Morocco: Security Concerns and the Test of Human Rights.”

On February 2 in Algeria, former Industry and Pharmaceutical Production Minister Ali Aoun will face trial over corruption charges.

Gönül Tol at the Middle East Institute: “Ankara’s Double Win: Kurds, Israel, and the New Syria.” An excerpt:

Öcalan’s continued commitment to disarmament — and the collapse of the SDF along with Kurdish autonomy — effectively resolves Erdoğan’s “Kurdish problem” in Syria. On the “Israel problem,” Ankara also believes its hand has been strengthened, largely thanks to Ambassador Barrack. A Turkish official told the author that Ankara coordinated with Barrack ahead of the offensive to ensure Israel would not intervene to protect the SDF. Barrack may also be tilting the balance toward Turkey on other priorities. Turkey recently deployed an advanced radar system at Damascus International Airport — the HTRS-100 air traffic control radar produced by Turkish defense firm ASELSAN. Turkey’s ambassador to Syria, Nuh Yılmaz, described it as a major infrastructure upgrade for the capital’s main aviation hub. While Turkish officials insist the system is for civilian use, Israeli officials worry it could still constrain Israel’s freedom of action in Syrian airspace.

Farea Al-Muslimi at Amwaj: “Iraq’s Underestimated Role in the Rise of Yemen’s Houthis.” Al-Muslimi chronicles the impact of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq - and ensuing political ascendancy of the Shi’a within Iraq - helped generate networks that in turn shaped the Houthis/Ansar Allah, despite differences between the Twelver Shi’ism found in Iraq and Iran and the Zaydi Shi’ism found in Yemen. Al-Muslimi goes on to discuss the reported financial, training, and political ties connecting the Houthis to various Iraqi militias.

Christine Burke and Mirette Magdy at Bloomberg: “Saudi Arabia’s Pullback Spreads, From Neom to World Cup Stadiums.”

Tim Bradshaw at the FT:

Abu Dhabi’s top tech university has launched an AI system capable of advanced reasoning that researchers say ranks alongside the best open models from the US and China, accelerating the United Arab Emirates’ push into “sovereign” AI.

The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) on Tuesday released its latest model, K2 Think, alongside a complete disclosure of the data, algorithms and other code that was used to build it, as the country seeks to gain an edge in a market that has become dominated by Chinese AI groups.

James Ryan, Asma Abdi, Kaveh Ehsani, and Maziyar Ghiabi in a podcast episode at the Middle East Research and Information Project: “On Iran’s Protests.”