Fathi M. Ahmed, Maryan Seylac and Muthoki Mumo discuss the challenges they’ve faced and how colleagues and editors could help
Pursuing journalism is not easy for Somali women. Those who join the profession have conquered numerous obstacles, including secretly studying to avoid facing their families’ displeasure. Despite these challenges, many women have established themselves as formidable figures in the press in a country where journalists face threats from both state security agents and armed groups.
One of those women is Fathi Mohamed Ahmed, whose interest in journalism started at an early age after her grandmother made it a habit of listening to BBC radio every day with her.
Mohamed Ahmed is now the editor-in-chief of all-female media outlet Bilan Media, a first of its kind in Somalia. Even though she decided she would be a journalist when she was a child, she says, her family was not up for the idea. So she took a media course in secret, without the knowledge of her own family. “When my mother asked where I was going after school, I told her I was going to a computer school. I was hiding what I was doing because I knew if they found out, they would stop me,” she says.
