Good morning, Mogadishu! Preserving Somalia’s cultural history, one tape at a time

Sitting in a small, windowless room in a government building in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, Mohamed Yusuf Mohamed loops another audio tape onto the dilapidated machine and presses a few buttons.

He’s beginning a time-intensive process to digitize some seven decades of unique historical recordings belonging to the government-run Radio Mogadishu.

One down, a couple of hundred thousand to go

After a few clicks, the antiquated device starts to…