Mohamud Siraji, 30, a recent York graduate with a Bachelor of Commerce (2014), visited Toronto this month, on break from his new role in Somalia as a Member of Parliament in the country’s federal government.

Mohamud Siraji

“It was a difficult decision to leave Toronto, but this was the right time to give back and to rebuild Somalia as a peaceful country,” said Siraji.

He was first elected in February 2018 as MP for Jubbaland, the district of Somalia adjacent to the Kenyan border and not far from Dadaab, a complex of refugee camps in Northeast Kenya where he spent most of his youth. As a very young boy Siraji’s parents fled Southern Somalia, as civil war displaced more than a million people in the early 1990s.