The Future of Higher Education in Somalia

Somalia's higher education sector is at a crossroads. Universities are growing in number but not always in quality. Graduates are entering a market that is struggling to absorb them, and the distance between what institutions teach and what the economy needs has never been wider.

Veynuus Industry Talk brings together educators, policymakers, industry leaders and students for an honest conversation about where Somali higher education is, where it needs to go, and who is responsible for getting it there. This first edition, in Mogadishu on 25 June 2026, focuses on curriculum relevance, institutional accountability, the role of private universities, and what genuine reform would look like in practice.

Why this subject, first

Higher education was chosen to open the series because it is a subject on which every party holds a firm position and the shared evidence base is thin. Employers describe graduates who arrive unready for the work. Universities describe employers who have never told them what they need. Ministries are asked to regulate a sector whose basic comparative data has never been assembled in one place. Each group is working from an impression of the others, and the impressions do not reconcile.

A discussion in that condition is worth convening precisely because it has not happened. The question of what universities owe the next generation is not a rhetorical one in Somalia. It is a live allocation question about fees paid by families with limited means, years of a young person's life, and the composition of the country's professional workforce a decade from now.

How the session is run

Industry Talk is anchored to published material rather than to a panel line-up. Veynuus publishes and presents original research relevant to the sector under discussion, circulated before the room convenes, so that participants arrive having read the same evidence. That changes the character of the conversation: it starts from disagreement about interpretation rather than from an exchange of positions everyone already holds.

This is not a panel where problems are named and left on the table. The session is designed to move from description to responsibility — which body, institution or employer can act on a given problem, on what timescale, and what would have to change for them to do so. Participants should expect to be asked what they themselves would commit to, rather than only what others ought to do.

Who should attend

The session is open to all. University leadership, faculty, ministry officials, accreditation and quality assurance staff, employers who hire graduates, development partners funding education work, and students are all invited. Students are invited as participants rather than as an audience, on the straightforward ground that decisions about curriculum, accreditation and institutional priorities are routinely taken about them without them in the room.

The edition is being held in Mogadishu. Details on registration and participation will be published ahead of the date.