Photo Courtesy of the Harvard Gazette
After fleeing her homeland almost 25 years ago, Fadumo Dayib has decided she wants to be president of Somalia.
“I’m generally an optimist,” Ms. Dayib told Good News Network.
She certainly needs to be, since she’s the first female candidate in the nation and going up against some fiery opponents in a male-dominated country.
Her life story provides reason for optimism, too. She’s beaten enormous odds during her 42 years.
She learned to read at age 14, an impressive feat for any Somalian woman – and used that skill to earn a master’s degree in health care and public health, and a second one in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Dayib and her family left as refugees fleeing Somalia’s civil war when she was just a child, living briefly in Kenya before settling in Finland.
She returned to Somalia briefly as part of a U.N. mission to build clinics and provide health care in 2005, but left the country again when the U.N. deemed it was no longer safe to stay.
Always in the back of her mind, Dayib, now a mother of four, wanted to heal the wounds in her homeland and knew the changes would have to come from the top – which is why, having graduated from Harvard this spring, she is running next year to become the first woman president of her native country.
“Somalia needs a multidimensional approach to tackling issues,” Dayib told Good News Network. “But everything boils down to tackling poverty.”
Somalia is still recovering from more than 20 years of civil war and its aftermath, and the country lacks many basic services; but Dayib believes Somalia is poised for a brighter future.