Ahmed Ismail Samatar was born and raised in the
Gabiley District, situated in
Somaliland. He is the brother of scholar and politician
Abdi Ismail Samatar. His father Ismail Samatar Mohamed (Dheere) was a businessman and traditional elder, and his mother Haliimo Abdilaahi Kahin is the sister of the late coffee tycoon Mohamed Abdillahi Ogsadey. Samatar began his early traditional
Islamic schooling (mal'amad qur'an) while he was young. His first
Qur'an teacher was Ma'alin Hassan Fahiye. In 1952, he was the first student enrolled in the first Gabiley Primary/intermediate school, where he finished his lower education. His middle and high schools were in Amoud Intermediate and Agricultural secondary school. After finishing high school, Samatar moved to
Mogadishu, the capital city of the
Somalia, where he was accepted as a radio broadcaster at
Radio Mogadishu in the mid 60s. In the late 60s, Ahmed filled a vacancy at the BBC African service, although was still young. He served as a
BBC broadcaster till the mid 70s when he made up his mind to get a higher education. He later moved from London to the United States. Samatar has lectured at many universities and colleges, including
Cornell,
Harvard,
Iowa,
London School of Economics and Political Science,
Somali National University,
Toronto University,
University of Amsterdam,
York University,
University of Otago,
University of Hargeisa and
Wellesley College. His expertise is in the areas of global political economy, political and social thought, and Somali affairs. He is the author/editor of five books and over thirty articles. Additionally, Samatar is the founding editor-in-chief of
Bildhaan, one of the international journals of
Somali Studies. He is also the editor of eighteen volumes of
Macalester International, a publication of undergraduate education and internationalism. A Fulbright Fellow, Samatar has been awarded grants by the
Ford Foundation, the
Mellon Foundation, the
United States Institute of Peace, the
Heinrich Böll Foundation and the
St. Paul Foundation. His current research is on two tracks: a collaborative two volumes on leadership and the Somali experience; and globalization and the rise of Islamic consciousness. Since 1994, Samatar has been teaching at
Macalester College, where he is the James Wallace Professor and retired Dean of the Institute for Global Citizenship. In mid-2012, Samatar ran for political office as one of the potential candidates in Somalia's
2012 presidential elections. == Bibliography ==