The Point Magazine

A former Somali Prime Minister has called on Somali Australians to become ‘viable’ members of their local communities so that in the future, they can help their former homeland rebuild its war-battered institutions.

Credited with devising a roadmap to transition in Somalia, former Prime Minister Dr Abdiweli Mohamed Ali visited Australia earlier this year to speak about the impact of instability in the African country on Australia and the international community.

One of Australia’s new and emerging communities, latest Census figures show that the Somali-born community now numbers about 6,000 people.

Stemming from the civil war, Australia accepted significant numbers of Somalis via the refugee and humanitarian program in the 1990s. Many now live in Sydney and Melbourne and are Sunni Muslims.

Like various other migrant communities before them, Somalis provide an important financial lifeline by sending money back home to their families.

While there are many young Somali professionals in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia who can contribute to the redevelopment of the war-torn country, Dr Abdiweli said such individuals first had to become “useful members” in their adopted countries.

“When they are here [in Australia], they have to make it here,” he said in an interview with the Somali Podcast, a sister project of The Point Magazine.

“They have to go to school, be educated, get jobs … become viable members of the society they live in socially, economically and politically, and then you can help Somalia. And the way you can help is they can be a bridge between their native country and their adopted country [to] create a mutually advantageous relationship between their adopted country and their native country.”

Dr Abdiweli spoke of the urgent need to rebuild Somali state institutions as warlords, tribalism and more recently religious extremism, have taken a toll on a country “yearning for peace”.

One of the ways to help bring stability is to liberate the country from al-Shabab, he said, describing the group as “al-Qaeda’s franchise in Somalia”, and one that has wreaked “havoc” across some Somali communities.

There has been international concern that al-Shabab (an Arabic word meaning \'the youth\') has attracted young people from the West, including from the Somali diaspora.

But Dr Abdiweli said that the diaspora has a responsibility to contribute to the “peaceful process”.

His vision of Somalia is of a country at peace with itself and its neighbours, and that provides for its own people and is democratic.

“Somalia has a history and tradition of democracy, of governance so my vision is Somalia becoming a vibrant democratic Somalia in the Horn of Africa.”

Dr Abdiweli currently serves as a professor of economics at a New York university.

Watch Dr Abdiweli\'s interview with Malik Osman on the Somali Podcast: www.somalipodcast.org.au