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Somali academics and professionals from three continents honoured in Edmonton
The Alberta Somali Heritage Association brought together participants from North America, Europe and Africa to recognise Somalis who have served their communities, and to hear where the Canadian Somali community now stands.
EDMONTON (SONNA): Somali academics and professionals from North America, Europe and Africa have been honoured at an event in Edmonton, Alberta, organised by the Alberta Somali Heritage Association.
The gathering recognised individuals for service to their communities, and the Association presented awards to Somali academics and professionals drawn from each of the continents represented, with the organisers encouraging them to continue that work.
Three academics addressed the event on the position of Somalis in Canada, the difficulties they have come through and the opportunities now before them. Prof Hussein Warsame, Prof Afyare Abdi Elmi and Dr Habiba Mahmoud each thanked the organisers for assembling a gathering of that size.
The Association’s Chairman, Osman Shire, thanked those who attended and said the organisation will continue holding meetings and events that bring the Somali community together, and will keep playing that convening role.
Canada has one of the larger Somali populations outside the Horn of Africa, concentrated in Ontario and Alberta, with Edmonton and Calgary among the cities where communities established themselves from the early 1990s onward. A generation that arrived as children has since moved through Canadian universities and into the professions, and events of this kind are one of the ways that generation has become visible to itself.
The pattern is not confined to Canada. Earlier this month a Somali delegation was received at the Minnesota State Capitol by Representative Samakab Hussein, elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives from District 65, who briefed the visitors on the position of the Somali community in the state and its part in politics, health care and business. The State Minister for Transport and Civil Aviation, who led that delegation, said afterwards that he hoped to send parliamentary committees to draw on the experience.
Somali government ministers have also spent recent months addressing the diaspora directly on where its money goes. The Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation told business figures at an airport in Mogadishu last month that Somalis have built substantial assets in Nairobi, Egypt and Türkiye while their land and their futures are in Somalia, and the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Fisheries have each made a version of the same argument since August.
What an evening of awards in Edmonton represents is the other half of that relationship. The people being recognised are Somalis who built careers abroad, and the organisers are asking them to keep serving the community they came from rather than to move their capital anywhere. The Association did not publish the names of those honoured.
