Nairobi: Hassan Shaikh Mahmoud, a 56-year-old university lecturer chosen by lawmakers on Monday as Somalia’s new president, is something of an unknown quantity.
“We don’t know much about him at all,” a western diplomat told AFP as voting in the presidential poll drew to a close.
“He comes from Somali civil society and he has links to Al Islah, the equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s only in the past two days that we’ve been hearing a lot about him,” the diplomat said.
In academic and NGO circles Hassan Shaikh Mahmoud, the co-founder of the Somali Institute of Management and Administrative Development (Simad), is said to be a respected and influential figure who specialises in education.
In the streets of Mogadishu news of his election was met with residents firing into the air to express their joy.
Simad was set up to ensure that war-ravaged Somalia got its fair share of managers and administrators.
Born in 1955 in Jalalaqsi in the central Hiran region, Hassan Shaikh Mahmoud is, like the outgoing president Sharif Shaikh Ahmad whom he beat in Monday’s poll, from the powerful Hawiye, the majority clan in Mogadishu.
