S2 EP 11: Building Somalia’s Scholarly Infrastructure Post- Civil Conflict: A Conversation With Mr. Mohamud Mohamed Siad and Eng. Ahmed Siyad

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

somalia, universities, library, research, resources, ahmed, access, university, institutions, library association, digital, DOI, academic libraries, joint initiatives, capacity, Research4Life

EPISODE SUMMARY:

In this episode, we explore efforts to rebuild Somalia’s scholarly landscape post-civil conflict. Eng. Ahmed Dahir Siyad from SomaliREN and Mr. Mohamud Mohamed Siad from the Somali Library Association (SLA) discuss challenges and progress in improving digital infrastructure, research access, and libraries.

SomaliREN has connected 50 university campuses to a national network, established a data center, and launched the SORA digital repository, promoting open access to research. Mr. Mohamed, a University Librarian at SIMAD University, formed the Somali Library Association to address the shortage of qualified librarians and enhance digital library management.

The episode highlights the importance of capacity building, collaboration, and government support in advancing Somali higher education, envisioning a future with modern digital libraries, and increased global visibility for Somalia research.

HERE ARE THE KEY THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR:

1. Rebuilding Efforts: The initiatives to restore and strengthen the educational and scholarly landscape after a period of conflict.

2. Digital Infrastructure: The development of internet connectivity, data centers, and digital repositories to support education and research.

3. Library Development: Efforts to enhance library services, including the formation of associations and training programs to improve library management.

4. Open Access: The promotion of open access to research and resources to increase visibility and accessibility.

5.Collaboration and Support: The role of partnerships, training, and government support in advancing educational initiatives.

6. Future Outlook: The vision for modernizing educational infrastructure, including digital libraries and improved research visibility on a global scale.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Welcome to Mazungumzo, African scholarly conversations, a podcast that highlights the perspectives of various stakeholders in academia, and research fields across Africa through open dialogue or mazungumzo on scholarly communication in Africa.

Joy Owango:

Welcome to Mazungumzo – African Scholarly Conversations, where we are joined by an expansive list of African policymakers, science communication specialists, innovators, and tertiary institution leads who contribute to this realm of science communication and Scholarly Communication.  I’m your host Joy Owango, the Executive Director of the Training Center in communication, a capacity building trust based at the University of Nairobi Chiromo campus in Kenya.

The landscape of digital resources and scholarly communication in Somalia’s higher education institutions has witnessed significant transformations in recent years, driven by initiatives like the Somali Research and Education Network, or popularly known as SomaliREN, and the Somali Library Association. To help us navigate this evolving space, we are joined by two esteemed guests who bring invaluable perspectives.

First, we have with us Mr. Mohamud Mohamed Siad, the Chair of the Somali Library Association and the University Librarian at SIMAD University.

We also have with us the CEO of SomaliREN, Eng. Ahmed Dahir Siyad, who is leading efforts to enhance digital infrastructure for education and research in Somalia.

A warm welcome to the programme Mr. Mohamud and Eng. Ahmed.

Joy Owango:

To kick things off, I’d like to invite each of our guests to briefly introduce themselves and provide some context about their background and role related to today’s topic. Mr. Mohamud, would you mind starting us off?

Mr. Mohamud Mohamed Siad:

Thank you, Joy. My journey begins at SIMAD University, which is the most famous university in Somalia, from which I started my degree in Business Administration. During my study, I applied a faculty job in library which was a voluntary one at the time. This was I came to realize that working in the library can really advance my degree as I expose myself to lots of resources that were relevant to my degree qualification at the time. I then worked as a library staff, which I continued until I recently finished my bachelor’s certificate. From then I got a scholarship from SIMAD University and then was recommended to do a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science by the Dean of the university at the time, who is the current president of Somalia, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Then I went overseas and got admission at the International Islamic University of Malaysia. After finishing my Msc degree, I returned to SIMAD University, served as the head librarian, and later promoted to University Librarian to assist the university to be a research university because after the Civil War, things had changed. Private institutions had come up and replaced the services provided by the central government, and the universities at the time were not highly advanced and well-informed, so they just focused on distributing knowledge rather than producing research. By now the universities focusing on research as you see lately, the publications have improved and that’s why I was promoted to be the university librarian. Apart from SIMAD University, I have seen myself that I’m the only librarian there because many scholars had fled the country and I was the one who returned and it was my responsibility to serve not only in SIMAD but also other university libraries to contribute my knowledge. You know when you work at a single university, you cannot help another university which is private, so I came up with the idea of the Somali Library Association (SLA), and that’s where I am now. Thank you very much

Joy Owango:

Oh, interesting. So the fact is that you stayed and saw that there were very few librarians it’s what spurred you to have the Somali Library Association not only support SIMAD University but also the representative universities within the country. And it’s a good thing you stayed.

Now, Eng. Ahmed, could you take us through your background and how you came about becoming the CEO of SomaliREN, and what spurred you to get into the scholarly infrastructure?

Eng. Ahmed Dahir Siyad

Thank you, Joy for having me again. It’s a pleasure to be in this program. During my study period, I was trained to build internet infrastructure and telecommunication networks, and over the past 10 years I have been deeply involved in leading the enhancement of the digital connectivity and infrastructure for higher education and research institutions in Somalia, whether it’s as my role at SomaliREN as the CEO or as being an active community member in the country. In addition to my role at SomaliREN, I have been actively involved in local communities. I was one of the founding members of Somali Network Operators’ Group (SomNOG), a community led forum that has been organizing ICT conferences, and technical workshops since 2015. A platform that is purely dedicated to knowledge sharing, research and improving local technical skills. Since I have that passion to build networks, to make the internet work, I joined SomaliREN as an engineer, to actually help them to make their first data center, and after that my journey goes and ends into them having National Research and Education Data Center that’s connecting the member institutions. So, it’s been exciting journey, helping universities and research communities in Somalia to improve their digital landscape.

Joy Owango:

Mr. Mohamud, let’s start with you. From the perspective of academic libraries, what is the current state of digital scholarly resources and e-infrastructure at Somalia universities? What progress has been made, and what are the major gaps?

Mr. Mohamud Mohamed Siad:

Coming back to my perspective, academic universities are run by private institutions, rather than led by the government. So, you can understand that when private institutions do not receive any direct funding from the government, they focus on distributing knowledge. Much is not given to the libraries and they are not involved much but currently, since the government is there, the private institutions are quite afraid of evaluations so they started upgrading the libraries. I have received lots of call for them to assist with library collections because at the beginning, the collections at the library did not match the curriculum which they provide in the programmes. They just accepted donations from abroad. Students did not go to the library because if they went to the library, they could not receive the information resources they’d like. On the other hand, there were no online databases that are required for higher education institutions to have their services in the library. So what happened then is that they could not afford the resources there. So, I used my expertise as I had participated in lots of trainings outside the country and some in Nairobi. The first one was sponsored by the UNESCO Digital Library. From there, I learned the Open Knowledge, like the Research 4 Life then when I returned to SIMAD University, I introduced them to these tools and from then you can see how much they boosted the research activities right now. The research in Somalia has two motivations, one is that they should get grants from their institutions and number two, they should seek reliable information services like the research databases. They could not, find the right databases they needed. So, in the place of that, I trained them to utilize the Research 4 Life and now SIMAD is okay. They have really appreciated my trainings, and now there is no other option except Research 4 Life they have there. Likewise as the Somali Library Association (SLA), I take the responsibility for other academic libraries, to tell them that they should utilize this open knowledge platform from which they can get reliable resources for their students to upgrade their research skills and activities, so that the production of research will be okay. So now the universities are aware of Research4Life, even though many of them are reluctant because of their capacity. I can also confirm that universities in Somalia have understood that the lack of e-resources and you know, getting e-resources depends on coming together to form an association, to get their one voice like the economies of scale, so that they can negotiate with international publishers to receive databases as such. So I can say the gap is lack of funds, number one, and lack of capacity at this time.

Joy Owango:

Okay. But you acknowledge that the Research4Life resources have supported this ecosystem at least to begin with.

Mr. Mohamud Mohamed Siad:

Yes, it’s the only option that they have currently.

Joy Owango:

Okay now, interesting.

Now Eng. Ahmed, In SomaliREN’s 2024 Assessment report, lacking access to paid research databases and tools was flagged as a challenge for 64.29% of institutions. As academic libraries are gateways to these resources, Eng. Ahmed or even Mr. Mohamud, what initiatives are needed to improve affordable access? Let’s start with Eng. Ahmed, then Mr. Mohamud.

Eng. Ahmed Dahir Siyad

Thank you, Joy. So, the assessment you mentioned we collected from 28 member institutions, and we were assessing the current state of ICT infrastructure of SomaliREN members who are actually the major universities in the country.

The study actually gave us very alarming indications that require immediate intervention in every aspect. Whether it’s the digital content, the ICT infrastructure that includes the internet speed, the ICT resources that are available at the university, whether it’s the technical expertise or data center infrastructure, research content and access to digital libraries are areas that are also very much lacking. The outcome of the assessment, the first action was actually to present and share with the leaders of the higher education institutions, and we got the opportunity to share with them in our last annual council meeting in Nairobi.

They acknowledged the gaps and areas to…one area that requires great attention is the access to digital research and education resources. But for us, we are also building the foundations, if the university ICT infrastructure is not enough, there’s no good internet at the campus level, and students and faculties don’t have good internet access, then, even if the resources are available somewhere, they may have challenges to access these resources. So, to begin with, we are actually, assessing all areas that could contribute to improving the digital access in in general. So, the foundation is where we’re not good at, at this time, and it requires improvements. That includes increasing the bandwidth conception of member universities so that the researchers, faculties, and students could get good internet, and also to have a good proper ICT office, proper ICT data center, and ICT personnel, and then on top of that is where we are building on the digital contents for communities to access. So, we proposed a number of initiatives that include upgrading the facilities of member institutions and also coming up with some collaborative efforts since universities are working with limited type budgets while these investments require budgets.

So once the foundations are built from our perspective, then the access to content, digital resources, and libraries, both conventional and digital will be better. So, for us, we’re building the foundations that could facilitate access to digital libraries and digital resources.

Joy Owango:

Okay. Thank you so much. Mr. Mahmoud, what initiatives are needed to improve affordable access, picking up on what Eng. Ahmed has talked about it.

Mr. Mohamud Mohamed Siad:

Thank you again, Joy. I emphasize what Eng. Ahmed has just mentioned it. I think, alongside these foundations, we need to explore the open access available on the internet. These days, research databases are opening their resources but those who are familiar with them are very limited. So here, in the Somali universities, there is a lack of awareness of the available open sources. Until they form a collective voice where they can join hands and invest in reliable research databases, they can now utilize the available open-access databases. This is one of the projects that I’m focusing on at the Somali Library Association (SLA). I’m going to gather all Somali universities in a meeting where we can discuss the problems existing in their libraries, especially focusing on the research facilities and the Open Access Initiatives. I think if we do that kind of gathering, they will understand the way out; that we can collectively focus on especially open access resources available on the internet.

Joy Owango:

Yeah, you’re right. Capacity building is really necessary for awareness on understanding the various open-access solutions that exist. Because you’d be in a situation where the academic community does not know what is available to them to improve their research output. Yet there are quite a number of open-access resources. So yes, it is prudent to have the capacity strengthening as well as improve the infrastructural capacities, which Eng. Ahmed is emphasizing on. It leads to my next question, with open access publishing gaining momentum, really, not only open access publishing but looking at the Open Science movement, how can academic libraries promote these open scholarship practices and increase visibility for locally produced research in Somalia?

Mr. Mahmoud, you can answer that.

Mr. Mohamud Mohamed Siad:

Yes, thank you very much. I think the only thing this needs a leadership role, especially agents that are responsible for higher education, like the Ministry of Education. Here, we need a policy, a policy that dictates the ways that we can approach it, starting from the governmental level. the universities can then have a platform, where they can join. So, I think Somalia’s higher education is learning and growing. So, they need an intervention from the government, from development agencies and training institutions like yours, because they need knowledge sharing. The only way that a country can grow is to get a share of knowledge, especially through relations and connections. So, we are merging all these together and I think Somalia will come to the stage of realizing all this and join back where they used to be in the past years.

Joy Owango:

Okay, so over to you, Eng. Ahmed. Could you provide an overview of SomaliREN’s mission and the key milestones achieved so far in strengthening the digital infrastructure for education and research across Somalia institutions bearing in mind the collaborative initiatives that Mr. Mohamud is emphasizing on that need to be implemented to support the higher education sector?

Eng. Ahmed Dahir Siyad

Thank you. SomaliREN is a growing membership-based organization which is the NREN for Somalia. Its main mission is to provide affordable, accessible, high internet connectivity to the member institutions, and we are building a nationwide, National Research and Education Network (NREN), that connects the university campuses and higher education institutions in the country. The first data center of the NREN was established in 2018, where the first campus was connected, and it was an exciting moment for NREN. Before that the NRENs existed by name and the nature of an NREN is that it should have an operational network that actually provides multiple aspects.

Today, nearly 50 campuses are connected to the NREN network. Once these foundations have been established, although they still needs improvement, on top of this network, we start building applications and services that are specifically designed for higher education and research communities. We have been collaborating with global initiatives and regional NRENs who do what we are doing. We’re aligned and have joined ongoing global initiatives, to actually come up with something that’s more beneficial to our research and education community. We joined the global eduroam platform and global EduGAIN (Education Global Authentication Infrastructure) platform which are two important services that are available worldwide, where our higher education and research communities can be federated and can access the global wireless roaming as well as the education access. These initiatives are just examples. Another that has been locally produced is, and in line with what my friend Mohammed mentioned, is related to the open science and open access. We deployed a multi-institutional repository called SORA, which is FAIR-principle compliant, where the contents available are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable, with every posted model receiving a DOI. We started this initiative to help universities to have their own digital repository but due to technical challenges, it was not success initially for every institution to have its own digital repository. Then in collaboration with some international and regional institutions, we made it a centralized platform based on open access principles. Every institution will have its own community or account so that they will publish the contents or educational content that they have. Since then, this has been really successful, we’ve had a lot of interest since the platform was established. Many major universities are contributing, making it a centralized hub for educational resources. It serves as a unified digital repository where all institutions can share their content. So, these are the efforts we’re focusing on, particularly in content development and open science initiatives.

Joy Owango:

So, in essence, what you’re saying is that Somalia now has a national repository where the universities and the research institutions contribute to it.

Eng. Ahmed Dahir Siyad

Yes, exactly.

Joy Owango:

And where is this housed?

Eng. Ahmed Dahir Siyad:

It’s housed at the Somalia Data Centre and other international repositories

Joy Owango:

What have you done to make the output of the repository FAIR?

Eng. Ahmed Dahir Siyad:

We actually collaborated with the University of Catania, which helped Ethiopia do the same. We also engaged DataCite to get our DOI’s, and then to make everything FAIR principled, we followed the standard procedure to make these compliant as well as PlanS requirements.

Joy Owango:

Fantastic. You are actually assigning DOI to the outputs that are put within the repository.

Eng. Ahmed Dahir Siyad:

Yes, every record that comes into the repository gets its own DOI

Joy Owango:

Fantastic. This is such good news. Are there any plans to provide training programs for librarians, faculty, and researchers in member institutions to enhance their digital literacy and skills bearing in mind you have already set up the repository which means you have to understand data management, and library literacy in understanding the FAIR principles. So what are your plans to do this? Eng. Ahmed or Mr. Mahmoud, you can answer this.

Eng. Ahmed Dahir Siyad:

During process of launching the platform- SomaliREN Open Access Repository (SORA), once we finished the technical aspects of the platform, we organized workshops starting with university leadership to share the platform, to get commitment from them. These kinds of technological transformations we believe, are a top-bottom approach. It cannot start from the bottom; the commitment has to come from the leadership. We then organized workshops for Vice Chancellors to share the platform to empower those responsible within their respective institutions. We then developed a guide on how to use the platform and organized continuous workshops which are still ongoing. In line with that, we have organized workshops for the librarian communities some of which have been facilitated by Mr. Mohamud. We are forming the communities that are actually contributors to this platform. We are also organizing capacity building programs for data management and use of the platform.

Joy Owango:

Mr. Mohamud?

Mr. Mohamud Mohamed Siad:

My friend, Ahmed Siyad has done a good job with SomaliREN. I remember the day he called me for that training. One thing that SomaliREN and the country in general is lacking is facilitators of these services starting with the librarians. The problem that exists in the country, and that SomaliREN is grappling with in the coordination of such work and the contribution of SORA is the capacity. We are still in the phase of training all university libraries to let them understand that this is their job. The staff in the libraries are either not qualified or do not understand their roles and that is why the Somali Library Association (SLA) is taking the initiative to organize them and teach them that they have this kind of role, and they have to take the initiative from where my brother Ahmed Siyad is trying to assist the higher education sector, especially academic institutions.

Joy Owango:

You are right because other than the infrastructural challenges, there’s the human capacity aspect. And what you’re trying to do with the capacity building of the human resource bit is important because it doesn’t make sense to have these infrastructural systems set in place, and there is no human capacity to manage it. I think it’s also one of the main reasons why having a library association is important, because you can bring all these people together, and have a uniform conversation on the same. Now as I wind up, gentlemen looking ahead, what is your vision for the digital future of scholarly communication and research infrastructure in Somali higher education over the next 5-10 years? Mr. Mohamud, you can start then we will finish with Eng. Ahmed.

Mr. Mohamud Mohamed Siad:

Thank you for asking such a question, which is very necessary, From my perspective, as the chairman of the Somali Library Association, I see the need for information access and, coordination of research activities throughout the country. There is a gap in librarianship across the country and I think we need to bring all library staff into this single association to discuss the way forward. I also think that there must be some strategies that can handle all this by initiating teachings of library and information services in place, and from there we will be overcoming the lack of human capacity. And I think that Somali will be in place of following… There’s a general gap throughout African libraries, as I learned from the training I did in Nairobi but they are a little bit ahead of us. So, from that perspective if we work together, as my friend in managing SomaliREN, and I taking the responsibility of collecting the Somali Library staff into the association, I think if we receive the necessary funding…we are now doing these things voluntarily; Somalia will be in a better place, and the higher education will have advanced. Inshallah!

Joy Owango:

What about you? Eng. Ahmed?

Eng. Ahmed Dahir Siyad:

Well from the perspective, from my perspective, and in the eyes of the NRENs. In the next 5-10 years, I see Somali universities equipped with state of art digital libraries, high speed internet connectivity and advanced tools, that are accessible to all the students and faculty. To reach there we aim to foster an environment where open access publishing is the norm of locally produced research, global connectivity in terms of visibility, and research content to production as well.

We are also doing that by continuing in strong partnerships, and investing in capacity building as we just discussed. Human Resources is very important, and human capacity could be vital to reach the vision that we see. Our pillars are based on the three which are connectivity, content and community. We believe in investing in human capacity building so that they can make the change. Changes required to advance the future and to digitally enable higher education and research communities in the country.

Joy Owango:

Oh, fantastic, and that is a nice way to wind up. Thank you so much, gentlemen. Somalia has come a long way. I’m truly excited that you even have a national repository. Kenya just launched its national repository in April this year, and seeing that you’ve been you’re ahead of us, you’ve even assigned DOIs to make your work accessible, going in line with the FAIR principles, this is really the step in the right direction. I see a bright future for research output and visibility coming out of Somalia, but most importantly, I’m seeing increased library literacy when it comes to Somalia knowledge managers, which will have a ripple effect on the kind of output we are going to be seeing coming out of Somalia.

Thank you so much, gentlemen, and have a lovely day.

Outro

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