Warsame has been at the center of the region’s intensifying terrorism and recruitment concerns on different levels: At City Hall, he works on finding ways to create programs and opportunities leading youth to a productive future. In the community, he works with parents to educate them about the realities of radicalization in the community and the need to be involved in their children’s day-to-day activities.

Piracy, terrorism and criminal activities originating in Somalia can only be addressed by creating a climate of security, engagement and empowerment that will encourage home grown businesses, international investment and alternative employment for Somalia's young people.

It is just after 8am and Sheikh Abu Abdullahi is busy inspecting what he refers to as his latest "anti-NGO" project: workers digging new canals in Bulo Mareer, a town in Somalia's Lower Shabelle province. The diggers have been at work since 6am, as part of a province-wide canal-building project that was launched about two and a half years ago.

France became the first European country this week to join a worldwide effort to destroy ivory. The goal is to send a warning to ivory traffickers and to anyone who might not consider buying it a serious crime.

In recent years, Somalia’s al-Shabab militia has banned smoking, playing soccer, watching movies, wearing bras, anything it deemed Western. Now, the al-Qaeda-linked group has targeted something else common in most of the rest of the world: the Internet.

Aid agencies paid Somalia's al-Shabab militants for access to areas under their control in the 2011 famine, according to a joint report by two think tanks. In many cases al-Shabab insisted on distributing the aid and kept much of it for itself, the report says. Some of the groups are still paying al-Shabab to operate in the large parts of Somalia it still holds, it adds.

On Sunday, September 22, 2013, al-Shabab, a Somali-based al Qaeda cell unleashed gunfire on a Kenyan shopping mall, murdering 72 people and injuring over 200 others. The deadliest terrorist attack in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, the Kenyan mall shooting temporarily brought Africa to the forefront of U.S. news organizations like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, who typically ignore the continent.

Somalia said Sunday it was “not a secret” it is working with foreign governments to fight terror and described the country's Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab militants as a threat to the world. Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdo was commenting after U.S. commandos launched a raid against Shebab militants in Somalia, in tandem with a strike against a wanted Al-Qaeda leader in Libya.