Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is a Somali politician and academic who has served two non-consecutive terms as President of the Federal Republic of Somalia, first from 2012 to 2017 and again from 2022. He was born on November 29, 1955, in the village of Jalalaqsi in the Hiran region of central Somalia, into a family of the Hawiye Abgaal clan. He grew up in modest circumstances and pursued education as a route out of subsistence farming.

He studied at the Somali National University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in technology in 1981, and later earned a master's degree in technical education from Bhopal University in India in 1988. He returned to teach at the Somali National University until the collapse of the Somali state in 1991.

Through the 1990s and 2000s he worked as an education consultant for UNICEF and other agencies, co-founded the Somali Institute of Management and Administration Development in 1999, and helped establish SIMAD University in Mogadishu. He entered politics in 2011 as founder of the Peace and Development Party.

On September 10, 2012, he was elected President by a Somali parliament meeting under the country's new provisional constitution, the first leader chosen on Somali soil in more than two decades. His first term focused on rebuilding state institutions while combating al-Shabaab insurgents. After losing the 2017 election to Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, he won a second term on May 15, 2022. His second term has emphasized military offensives against al-Shabaab and constitutional reform.

The name Hassan is an Arabic masculine given name meaning "handsome" or "good," derived from the root h-s-n, and a name long honored in Islamic tradition.