Fadumo Dayib, an ex-model who fled the war-torn Somalia as a child is set to return to her ravaged land to campaign to become its first woman President. Despite death threats from warlords and Islamists, the 44-year old said: “I’m well aware of the danger. But the day comes and you have the capability to do so, you must fight for democracy.”
When Fadumo fled Somalia aged 17, she could hardly read or write. Since then she has got three university degrees - including one from Harward - worked as a model and nurse after she settled in Finland.
Sadly these qualifications will count for little in her homeland, where rival warlords and Islamists linked to Al-Qaida have turned the country into a battleground. Fadumo’s father was a truck driver and her mother, who was illiterate made a living by selling by the roadside. As the civil war loomed in 1990, they put Fadumo and her two younger siblings on a plane to Bucharest. Her beauty led her to work as a fashion model. The death of her mother, who joined the children in Finland, led her to pursue nursing.
While working with the UN in refugee camps she met Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia’s first woman president. “I thought if she can do this in Liberia why not me in Somalia?”
