GUEST SPEAKER - Former Prime Minister of Somalia

Tonight's (07.15.2013) speaker, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, came to the U.S. in 1985 to work at the Somalia Embassy in Washington, DC.  When civil war broke out in Somalia in 1991, Mr. Mohamed remained in the U.S. and earned a BA in History and an MA in Political Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo.  After serving in various government jobs in WNY, including as the Civil Rights Compliance Specialist with the NYS Department of Transportation, Mr. Mohamed was recruited by then Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed as Prime Minister of Somalia on October 14, 2010.  What happened next is an up-lifting story of national devotion, the harsh reality of poverty and drought on the African continent, and the politics of rebuilding a severed nation-state