Ownership & Funding
On a beat where most outlets are funded by somebody with an interest in the story, a reader is entitled to ask who pays for this one. This page answers that. Last updated: August 2026.
The short version: Somali Update is owned by the editors who founded it, paid for by advertising, and nobody outside the company has a say in what we publish.
Who owns the site
The site is published by a small privately held company owned by its founding editorial team. There is no parent conglomerate above it, no outside shareholder, and no investor who bought a piece of editorial in exchange for money. The company is registered where our business operations are based and it exists to publish this one title.
We do not print the owners’ names here. That is a real gap in our transparency and we would rather explain it than pretend otherwise. Our editors and contributors report on armed groups, security forces and politically connected businesses, and in this region a published name attached to that work becomes a target. Regulators, platforms, advertisers and lawyers who need the registered entity and its officers can have it on request through our contact page.
Who does not fund us
We take no money from any government, ministry, embassy, development agency or state broadcaster, in the Horn or outside it. No political party, candidate, PAC or advocacy organisation funds any part of this operation, and none has been offered a stake. We are not funded by a clan association or a diaspora political movement.
We have also turned down money that would have been easy to take. In election periods we are approached by people who want profiles, softer framing, or the removal of a published piece, sometimes through an intermediary offering an advertising contract at several times our usual rate. Those approaches are refused, and where the would-be buyer is a subject of our coverage, the approach itself may be something we report.
Where the money comes from
Advertising is our primary revenue and in most months effectively all of it. It comes from directly sold placements and newsletter sponsorship, and from programmatic display filled through the exchanges that serve our inventory. Our advertising page lists the categories we refuse and the labelling rules for commercial content.
Two smaller streams sit alongside it. We license our reporting and photographs for republication, for occasional syndication income. And a small number of pages carry affiliate links, mostly to books, where a purchase pays us a commission at no extra cost to the reader. Affiliate links are disclosed on the page carrying them and no recommendation is written to earn one. We take no subscriptions and there is no paywall. If we ever add reader support, it will be described here before it launches.
How ad money is kept away from the desk
Commercial relationships are handled on the business side of the company. Editors are not shown the advertiser pipeline, and the people selling space are not told what is being reported. There is no client list on the newsroom wall, no advertiser embargo, and no category of company our reporters are steered away from.
If an advertiser becomes the subject of a story, the story runs and the commercial relationship is disclosed in it. If an advertiser complains about coverage, the complaint is judged on the facts like any other and handled under our corrections policy. We have lost campaigns this way. That is the cost of the arrangement actually working.
Grants and donations, if we ever accept them
We receive no grants, foundation money or philanthropic funding today. If that changes, the terms are set in advance. We will publish the funder’s name, the amount, the term, the purpose and any conditions attached, on this page, before the first payment is spent. Any grant or donation large enough to matter to our finances is disclosed on its own rather than folded into a total.
We will not accept funding from a government or state-linked body, a political party or candidate, an armed actor or anyone connected to one, or a donor who asks for editorial input, sight of copy before publication, or a promise to cover particular topics. Funding that arrives with a coverage area attached is not a grant, it is a commission, and we would rather say no.
Conflicts of interest
The owners of this company have working lives outside it, as most people in small media do, including consultancy, translation and media training work in the region. Where any of that touches a subject we cover, two rules apply. The interest is disclosed in the story, and the person holding it neither reports nor edits it. A different editor takes the piece.
The same goes for staff and contributors, who declare outside work, family political connections, shareholdings and paid relationships with government bodies, aid organisations and companies on the beat. Anyone with a stake in a story steps back. Our editorial standards set out how declarations are recorded and who decides when a conflict is disqualifying.
Keeping this page honest
If ownership changes, if a new revenue stream starts, or if we accept funding from a new source, this page is updated as part of doing it, not months afterwards. The date at the top says when it was last reviewed, and we review it whether or not anything changed.
If something here looks incomplete or does not match what you can see on the site, write to support@somaliupdate.com and say which part. Our about page covers how the newsroom works and how it came to exist, which is the other half of this picture.
