Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud elected new Somali president

Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud has been elected as Somalia’s new president after defeating incumbent president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed who has been in power since 2009.


Mr. Mohamoud, the president elect is an academic who obtained a diploma from Mogadishu’s National University in 1981.

He later moved to India and attended Bhopal University, where he earned a Master’s Degree in 1988.

Mohamoud worked as an education officer for UNICEF in the central and southern parts of the country from 1993 to 1995. In 1999, he co-established the Somali Institute of Management and Administration (SIMAD) in the capital. The institution subsequently grew into the Simad University, with Mohamoud acting as Dean until 2010.

Mohamoud entered Somali politics 2010, when he established the independent Peace and Development Party (PDP) where party members unanimously elected him as the party’s chairman in April 2011, with a mandate to serve as leader for the next three years.

Mohamoud was unanimously elected the president of Somalia in a hotly contested presidential election held in Mogadishu for the first time in 21 years.

The newly appointed electoral team declared Mohamoud the winner after garnering 190 votes out of the 269 votes cast. His rival Sharif Sheikh Ahmed got 79 votes.

Today’s election is the first in two decades for Somalia election to take place on Somali soil, a sign that many Somalis and the international community attribute it to the military gains made by the Somali and African Union force in the capital, Mogadishu.