Dawan Media Group (DMG)

Dawan Media Group (DMG) is the official state print-media group of the Somaliland government, operating within the Ministry of Information, Culture and National Guidance/Awareness. Per the Somaliland Ministry of Information’s own institutional page, DMG was established on 1 January 1998 under the original name Mandeeq Media Group and was created to provide news, features, commentaries, and opinions through print-media tools, with the stated objective “to convey reliable information to members of the public while utilizing an easily accessible & cheap print media in somali, english & arabic languages.” The ministry says DMG manages Dawan in Somali, The Horn Tribune in English, and Alqaran in Arabic. The ministry’s same page also notes that newspapers and radio in Somaliland “tend to have a primarily local and regional audience, rather than a national one,” and that “newspaper readership is relatively limited due to low national literacy rates,” while newspapers nonetheless “dominate political commentary in Hargeisa, and have considerable influence within the Somaliland community as a whole.”

Methodological note on jurisdiction

Somaliland declared independence from Somalia in 1991 and has operated as a de facto state with its own governing institutions. On 26 December 2025, Israel became the first country to formally recognise Somaliland as independent. Somalia, the African Union, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation rejected or condemned the move and reaffirmed Somalia’s territorial integrity. For methodological consistency with prior years and with RSF, the State Media Monitor dataset continues to classify Somaliland’s state-media outlets (SLNTV, Radio Hargeysa, SOLNA, and Dawan Media Group) under the country entry for Somalia, while making clear that they operate under Somaliland government structures, not under the Federal Government of Somalia in Mogadishu.

Media assets 

Newspapers: Dawan, The Horn Tribune, Alqaran

Ownership and governance

DMG is owned and operated within Somaliland’s state-media system and is institutionally linked to the Ministry of Information, Culture and National Guidance/Awareness. The ministry lists DAWAN Media Group among its departments and describes its print-media role. According to the 2025 SMM profile, based on interviews with local journalists and foreign experts specialising in Somalia, the Ministry of Information appoints DMG’s editorial and administrative leadership.

As of April 2026, Khadar Abdullahi Hassan, also known as Khadar Gureyte, was publicly identified as Director of Dawan Media, per a 14 April 2026 Horn Tribune article reporting that he received a delegation from DT Global and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation at the newspaper’s Hargeisa headquarters. Abdikadir Da’ar was identified in the same item as Deputy Chairman of Dawan. No separate current 2026 editor-in-chief for Wargeyska Dawan was confirmed in this review (a 2012 Somaliland Sun report had identified Mohamed Osman Mire “Sayid” as managing editor and Omar Mohamed Farah as chief editor, but those identifications are not current).

No independent board, editorial council, autonomous public-service statute, or independent appointment framework was identified in the public sources reviewed.

Source of funding and budget

Detailed standalone budget disclosures for DMG were not identified in the public sources reviewed. The 2025 SMM profile, based on interviews with local journalists and international media experts, reported that DMG is primarily financed through public funds allocated through the Ministry of Information, with limited advertising or service revenue. The precise funding split between government allocation and any commercial revenues across the three newspapers is not publicly disclosed.

In April 2026, Dawan Media reported discussions with DT Global and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation on digitising Dawan’s archive, which dates back to 1998. This should be described as a digitisation-cooperation discussion rather than confirmed donor funding, absent a documented grant or project agreement. The broader macroeconomic context, Somaliland’s contested international status restricting access to international finance, the unresolved Las Anod/Sool dispute since 2023, and the disputed 1 January 2024 Memorandum of Understanding with Ethiopia (which under the previous Bihi administration offered Ethiopia naval base access at the Port of Berbera in exchange for an “in-depth assessment” toward recognition), continues to constrain the broader funding environment for state media.

Editorial independence

DMG does not show meaningful institutional separation from the Somaliland executive. As the official state print-media group of the Somaliland government, operated as a department within the Ministry of Information’s structure, the 2025 SMM profile describes DMG’s publications as overwhelmingly reflecting official perspectives, with no legal framework guaranteeing editorial autonomy for publicly funded media outlets. There is no domestic statute and no independent mechanism to validate the editorial independence of DMG’s media outlets, no editorial council or external oversight body, and no published editorial charter or code of practice.

AI and digital policy

DMG maintains digital publication channels through wargeyskadawan.com (Wargeyska Dawan), hortribune.com (The Horn Tribune), Al-Qarn al-Ifriqi (Alqaran), and associated social-media accounts. No public DMG-specific policy on AI-generated content, synthetic-media disclosure, or content provenance (such as C2PA) was identified in this review.

May 2026