Abdi Latif Dahir is a Middle East correspondent for The New York Times covering Lebanon and Syria. Prior to this appointment, he served as the East Africa correspondent and covered over a dozen countries for the newspaper and wrote about armed conflict and terrorism, business, and arts and culture.

Abdi was recently awarded the George Polk Award in Foreign Reporting for his contribution to an investigative series focusing on East African migrant workers abused in the Middle East. For this same reportage, he also won The Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center John Seigenthaler Courage in Journalism Award as well as its International Print Award. He was also awarded the Columbia Journalism School First Decade Award which recognises J-TEN alumni who have made significant contributions within the first ten years of graduation from Columbia University’s Journalism School.

Before joining The New York Times in 2019, he was a reporter with Quartz, based both in New York and Nairobi, where he also produced projects on entrepreneurship, technology, and China’s deepening influence in Africa. Before this, he was a reporter with United Press International covering East Africa, a Dag Hammarskjöld Fund for Journalists Fellow in New York, and a freelance journalist for Kenyan, regional, and international publications.

Read Abdi Latif Dahir’s archive of writings for The New York Times.