Former prime minister to discuss Somalia

Ali Khalif Galaydh, who served as the prime minister of Somalia from 2000 to 2001, visits to discuss the past, present and future of his native country in a lecture at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 15, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Avenue. Free and open to the public, the lecture continues a series of events offered in response to the anti-Somali rally scheduled in Lewiston Jan. 11 by a national hate group.

Galaydh, a visiting professor at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, holds degrees from Boston and Syracuse universities, and taught at the latter institution’s Maxwell School from 1989 to 1996.

At the Humphrey Institute he teaches about the politics of public affairs, strategies for economic development and the role of nongovernmental organizations in governance. Galaydh supports the outreach mission of the Humphrey Institute by working with the Minneapolis Somali community, the largest in the United States.

Galaydh was an official with the Ministry of the Interior during Somalia’s last democratically elected government, in the mid-1960s. During the 1970s, he headed two large sugar operations before being appointed minister of industry in 1980.

Galaydh was one of 650 delegates at the 2000 Somali National Peace Conference, held in the Republic of Djibouti, to participate in drafting a National Charter based on Somalia’s 1960 Constitution. The delegates then selected a 245-member parliament, which supported Galaydh’s appointment as prime minister in September 2000. He served until December 2001.