Somali business pioneers: founders of Somali firms at home and abroad

The short version

This page lists Somali business founders and executives, in Somalia and abroad, whose work is recorded in published sources. For the companies themselves, see Who connects Somalia, Somalia's main banks and stock exchanges and Hawala and money transfer companies.

The founders

The people

Mohamed Said Duale was born around 1948 near Gashamo. In 1970 he was given charge of a shop in Burao, which became Dahabshiil. He traded clothes, car parts and rice, lost his warehouses when fighting reached Burao in 1987, and in August 1988 began moving money for refugees from Dire Dawa in Ethiopia. That became the money transfer business (Wikipedia, Mohamed Said Duale; Wikipedia, Dahabshiil). See Dahabshiil.

Abdirashid Duale, his son, was born in Burao in 1977 and runs Dahabshiil today. See Abdirashid Duale.

Ali Mahdi Muhammad (1939 to 2021) worked as an independent businessman in Mogadishu before he was named interim President on 26 January 1991 (Wikipedia, Ali Mahdi Muhammad). See Ali Mahdi Muhammad.

Abdirizak Ido founded NationLink Telecom in September 1997 and is its president and controlling shareholder. Forbes listed him in 2017 among five multi-millionaires from Somalia (Forbes, 29 August 2017; Wikipedia, NationLink Telecom).

Hassan M. Osman (Dudde), an economist with the Somali Economic Forum, is chief executive of the Somali Stock Exchange, which the forum set up. It was registered in 2011 and sold its first shares on 1 September 2015 (Wikipedia, Somali Stock Exchange; UN Sustainable Stock Exchanges initiative, 2019).

Amina Moghe Hersi was born in 1964 in Bungoma, Kenya, and grew up in her family's cross-border trade between Kenya and Uganda. Through Horyal Investments she owns the Oasis Mall and Laburnam Courts apartments in Kampala, and in 2016 began building the $120 million Atiak Sugar Factory in northern Uganda (Wikipedia, Amina Moghe Hersi; Daily Monitor, 11 November 2013).

Jamila Gordon was born into a nomadic family, one of 16 children, and moved to Mogadishu at 11. When the war began she went to Kenya and later Australia, where she earned a business and IT degree in 1995. She became chief information officer of Qantas and CIMIC, and in April 2018 founded Lumachain, which tracks food supply chains, with $3.5 million in seed funding. The BBC named her one of its 100 Women in 2021 (Wikipedia, Jamila Gordon; WeShape, 27 February 2021).

Nasra Agil (also written Agile) was born in Somalia and raised in Canada. She studied civil engineering at Ryerson University, graduating in 2005, worked as a road inspector in Toronto and then for the engineering firm Cansult in Dubai. In 2012 she returned to Somalia and opened what is described as the country's first dollar store (Wikipedia, Nasra Agil).

For company profiles, see the directory of Somali companies and Somali business groups.

Sources disagree

• The first bank in the south since 1991. First Somali Bank is described as the first commercial bank to open in southern Somalia since 1991, in May 2012. Salaam Somali Bank says it opened in Mogadishu in October 2009 (Wikipedia, First Somali Bank; Wikipedia, Salaam Somali Bank).
• Jamila Gordon's company. Lumachain is described both as blockchain and computer vision software for the meat industry and as an AI platform for food supply chains (Wikipedia, Jamila Gordon; WeShape).