Abdi Latif Dahir The New York Times New East Africa Correspondent

Abdi Latif Dahir is joining International from Quartz Africa, where he has served as East Africa reporter for the past three years. Read more in this note from Michael Slackman and Laurie Goodstein.

The Times has long been committed to covering Africa with depth, creativity and enterprise. Now, at a moment when so many of our correspondents have moved on to new assignments, we are looking at this as an opportunity to bring new talent and fresh insight to our coverage.

We are excited to announce our first new correspondent: Abdi Latif Dahir is joining The Times in Nairobi from Quartz Africa, where he has served for three years as East Africa reporter.

Abdi has covered China’s deepening reach into Africa, the political transitions in Ethiopia and Sudan, and the intersection of technology and geopolitics (which of course is of particular interest to the journalistic ambitions of The Times right now). He has written about how companies and innovators are shaping industries, from agriculture to art. In between, he’s brought readers insightful stories about African culture, literature and food.

Besides his work in East Africa, Abdi has reported from Egypt and Nigeria, covered the United Nations General Assembly and written from Minnesota about the surge of the Somali political class there during the 2018 midterm elections in the United States.

Abdi was born in Nairobi and grew up partly in Mogadishu, the Somali capital. He has written about his love for Somalia and the pain of losing loved ones there in violent attacks by extremists. He began his career nearly a decade ago covering business and technology for the Daily Nation, in Kenya, and went on to write about the Horn of Africa region for various news outlets, including Africa Review, The East African, United Press International and Al Jazeera English.

Abdi, who speaks Somali, Arabic and Swahili, earned a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. In his spare time, he likes reading about African, Middle Eastern and Islamic history, as well as contemporary fiction and nonfiction.

Abdi takes up his new assignment in November. Please join us in welcoming him.

https://www.nytco.com/press/our-next-east-africa-correspondent/

 
Congratulations Abdi Dahir


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Is he the first Somali to work at NY Times
@Hani Malab

What? I started a thread like this on the generals and it was merged with this one on politics and I deleted the rest of the info which was similar what the op posted here.

What do you mean?

@kickz

These kinds of posts as “correspondent of east Africa” isn’t simply like working for NYT and it was a position mainly held by Americans.
Yeah, I believe it's the first time they have hired an actual African for an African office.
 
Yeah, I believe it's the first time they have hired an actual African for an African office.

@embarassing

I was just teasing you above & ignore it. The most amazing part is that this guy isn’t someone who graduated from western universities, but he is a by product of African education and work experience. Furthermore, they put a massive trust in him to be a bi-partisan and unbiased reporter towards the Somali clans and the feud between Somalia and Kenya and I salute him for that. Omer Jamal can’t help himself and became a mini @Teeri-Alpha.
 

Ras

It's all so tiresome
VIP
We need more of us to infiltrate Western media.

Inshallah one of us will found a household media brand like the Koreans did with the Washington Times
 
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