CAIRO — Political relations are rapidly changing in the Middle East and Africa — including Egyptian-Somali relations, which seem to have chilled with the neutral Somali position on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) crisis.

On March 8, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi received the new Somali ambassador to Egypt, Ilyas Sheikh Omar. On the same day, Omar issued a statement expressing Somalia’s willingness to initiate a rapprochement with Egypt.

“It is a great honor on this historic day to present my credentials to President Sisi,” Omar said at the beginning of his statement. He subsequently conveyed his country’s keenness to strengthen relations with Egypt and work in various fields through the activation of the memorandums of understanding signed between the two countries in 2015 and 2019 in the fields of health, education, agriculture, livestock and fisheries, and trade.

The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had issued March 5 a statement in which it expressed Egypt’s condemnation of the suicide bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia, that targeted a popular restaurant on March 4 and killed and wounded more than 50 people.