Somaliland offers to rename Berbera Airport after Trump

Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi Irro has suggested renaming Berbera International Airport after U.S. President Donald Trump, as his government intensifies a decades-long campaign for independence from Somalia.

Official response and confirmed impact

Irro raised the proposal during an interview with Council on Foreign Relations.

This comes after he recently floated the idea of inviting Trump to build a Trump Tower in the capital, Hargeisa.

“We are not giving anything for free,” Irro said. “We have to offer something.

And we expect the other partner to have the same or equal opportunities.”

Berbera sits on the Gulf of Aden, close to the Bab el-Mandeb strait – one of the world’s busiest and most contested shipping corridors, linking the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

Its airport has one of the longest runways in Africa, built by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and stretching more than 4,000 metres.

The port was redeveloped with investment from the United Arab Emirates’ DP World and now anchors a free trade zone that Somaliland’s government presents as an economic gateway for the wider Horn of Africa.