Somali students leave Diaspora for cheaper degrees at home

MOGADISHU, Friday

Sporting a black graduation gown and cap, 24-year-old Abdirisak Ibrahim walks up to the podium to receive his medical degree to whistles and whoops from fellow students and friends gathered in a hall for the ceremony.

Although he could have taken the medical course in the glittering city of Dubai where he was born, Ibrahim chose to study in Somalia — his homeland that has become a byword for anarchy and bloodletting.

A number of Somalis sitting out the violence abroad have sent their children home to take advantage of lower tuition fees and the relative ease of enrolling in medical school in Mogadishu.

“It is very expensive to study in cities like Dubai,” Ibrahim said. “Those universities overseas as a whole prioritise their own people first.”

It costs $1,800 a year (approximately Sh140,000) to study medicine at Somalia’s sole medical school, Mogadishu’s Benadir University.

Although kinder on the pocket, education in the chaotic city can be a matter of life and death. Students risk near-daily gunfights going to and from lectures, and even while in class.

However, they get plenty of practice on the scores of injured rushed to the university’s hospital.

“I knew the risks of going to college in Mogadishu, but the decision to study back home was the best choice,” Ibrahim said after the graduation ceremony, held in a hall pockmarked with bullet holes.

Last year, two students from Ibrahim’s class were killed in the city’s incessant violence. One was beheaded by Ethiopian soldiers who mistook him for an insurgent fighter. Another was shot dead when a gunfight started in a street he was on.

President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s fragile administration is facing a campaign by Islamist insurgents intent on ousting him. The violence has killed more than 19,000 civilians since the start of 2007 and driven 1.5 million from their homes.

There are 20 students at Benadir who have left the comfort of their homes abroad to study in Somalia.

For 23-year-old Ikram Adikarim, she decided to leave Pakistan and study at Benadir despite the threat from the Islamist insurgents who govern most of Somalia, and who also oppose the education of women.

She had to pass through road blocks manned by hostile gunmen just to get to class. “There were too many obstacles, but I had no choice, I had to go to college,” she said, encouraging other Somalis to return and help their battered country.

“Come back, do something for the country and the people. However bad the situation is, it is your country,” she said.

The graduating class’s qualifications are recognised by universities in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Ghana, Egypt and by the World Health Organisation, according to the university’s Website.

Benadir’s registrar, Ahmed Aded, says the university received a large number of students from the Diaspora when Mogadishu was governed by Islamists in the second half of 2006, a period of relative calm.

“The number has gone down dramatically in the last two years. Families were very worried about the security of their children,” Aded said.

“There was also the risk that some of the students might join the fighting. Some parents decided to take them back.”

Western nations are increasingly concerned about the radicalisation of Somali youth living within their countries. Some have returned to Somalia to boost the insurgents’ ranks.

Twenty four doctors graduated from Benadir this September, the second batch to qualify in the last 18 years from the institution set up in 2002 by 16 doctors.

Mohammed Mohamud, dean of Benadir’s medical school, praised the dedication shown by the students and faculty.

“They have shown bravery and commitment to assist their people suffering the trauma of the crisis,” Mohamud said. (Reuters).