Hargeisa Cultural Center: Preserving and Bridging Identities

I first came to the Hargeisa Cultural Center (HCC), the old campus near Imperial Hotel, nearly ten years ago. The compound’s gates were high and it wasn’t apparent from the outside what was happening behind these doors. Yet as you stepped foot into the campus, you were swept into another world unlike anything else in Somaliland at the time.

It quickly became my home away from home, and I enjoyed the vibrant space dedicated to bringing people together and celebrating our culture. It had a library, a theatre/event space, and a gallery available to the public. There was no other library in the city at that time. The gallery back then was kind of a museum space with various artifacts collected throughout the years.

There were also programs designed specifically for children. One evening, BK performed for us during a private event dedicated to the volunteers of the Hargeisa International Book Fair (HIBF), the largest and oldest in the Somali territories, organized each year by the center. Book talks and smaller gatherings were frequent, and the place was always alive with activity: dialogues with academics, readings, and plays. Innovation, creativity, and cultural expression thrived there, drawing people from across the city, especially the young. It was a vibrant space to be part of, and the best place to get to know who was who in Hargeisa.

When I first met the Director, Jama Musse Jama, respectfully called Adeero (uncle) by all staff and affiliates of the HCC, he looked at me and said, “There’s work to be done. Welcome home.” His words carried warmth and expectation, it felt like a call to belong and to contribute.

I spent many summers going back and forth to this space and was surprised by the community and cultural learnings that happened through it. Up to that point, and after, to be honest, there was not a place in the city where people would come together and actively engage with each other around culture, arts and history.

As a young woman from the diaspora, I was hungry for a space to connect and learn about my culture and I’m forever grateful that this space gave me the ability to do so.

This summer, one of my former colleagues shared that although she was raised in Hargeisa, she was also learning about her culture and history during that time from being there. Her reflection stayed with me. It made me realize that the conversation wasn’t a matter of locals versus diaspora not having access to their culture and history. It was a generational issue as Somalis navigated life after protracted conflict.

This is an important part to highlight: Somalis everywhere growing up after the war did not have immediate access to culture, history, and intergenerational cultural production. It also begs the question of how information will be passed down, being that we come from an oral society that is also highly segregated along gender and age lines.

That's one of the main poignant aspects of the Hargeisa Cultural Centre — it served to dispel many of these divisions in cultural information and production by bringing people together within public forums to have information-sharing sessions.

So many legendary cultural producers have passed on, yet through the Center and the Book Fair, many were given a space to engage with their society and to be celebrated. Behind the main event space at the Center, a large poster displays their faces — some still living, many no longer with us. May those who have passed rest in peace: Mohamad Ibrahim Warsame “Hadraawi,” the legendary poet; Dr. Hussein Adam “Tanzani,” professor and founder of the Somali Studies International Association; Dr. Adan Abokor, NGO professional; and Said Jama Hussein, author and beloved trustee of Kayd Somali Arts and Culture.

The predecessor to the HIBF was the Mooge Festival, held in 2009 at Ambassador Hotel. Created to honor the late musician and freedom fighter Mohamed Mooge Liban, the festival brought together people who knew him from various facets of his life. They spoke about his many roles: teacher, freedom fighter, singer, musician, and creative. For someone who had such a strong influence on Somali society, with a minimal digital trail of his legacy, this was a deeply special way to remember him. The beauty of celebrating your heroes at home is unmatched, something that Hargeisa does so well.

When speaking to Abdikarim “Hikmaawi,” an author shaped by this space, he reflected on how it changed his life. He remembered, “I first came to this space in 2011. I was interested in reading and writing and loved listening to poems, creatives and artists, so it was a good space to watch all these different facets come together.” He told me that it was also the first place where he encountered literature written in Somali.

Back then, there was a short story competition for young writers called Sheeko iyo Shaahid (a tale and witness). Launched in 2008 as part of the HIBF, it gave emerging writers the chance to be published alongside prominent Somali authors. The winning stories were edited and produced by Jama Musse Jama through his publishing arm, Ponte Invisibile.

He remembered how the space encouraged young people to talk about art and literature in new ways. “It was the first time I heard young people speak about poetry in an analytical way,” he said. “We felt like we were part of the cultural conversations that were happening.”

That experience inspired him to join “Hal Qor,” a writing club, where he later became the chairman. “In this space, a lot of people enjoyed my writing, my creativity, my knowledge of the Somali language, and my command of literature and prose.” He eventually became a high school teacher of poetry and creative writing. “For the past four years,” he told me, “I’ve been one of the instructors teaching the workshops on writing and poetry at the Centre. I’m happy to see its impact, including the HIBF, still reverberating through society.”

Before the HIBF kicked off, there would be workshops taught by elder Somali writers and public intellectuals like Xikmaawi mentioned, they were spaces dedicated to writing, poetry, and exchange. Our teachers and cultural custodians were continuing their legacy by directly impacting and engaging the next generation. For a people dispersed by conflict, this coming together of society served as a step toward social cohesion and the building of a national conscience.

When I spoke with my former colleague, Sahra Ladan, she shared her experience being around Mohamad Ibrahim Warsame “Hadraawi” and Mohamad Hashi Dhama’ “Gaarriye.” As a young woman in the readers’ club in Burao, she said she learned about leadership, culture, and history by simply being in their presence.

“I would sit in between Hadraawi and Gaariye,” she recalled, “and hear them joke around and talk about their travels. They’d tell stories about their time at Lafoole, and it was like I was there. I lived through many timelines I had never seen with my own eyes.” She told me she asked them about their poetry and the meaning behind their work. “They would tell me passionately,” she said. “As a student and confidant of theirs, I became well-versed in their work and could have informed discussions with others, even correcting their diction or information when it came to their poems.”

Her eyes lit up when she remembered how Hadraawi would affectionately call her Sahra Yar (little Sahra). “I accompanied them to Djibouti for Somali PEN in 2013,” she added, “and I will never forget the impact this experience had on my life.”

The HIBF and HCC made a world of difference for me as a diaspora returnee, but their impact on Somalis living within the city and country is insurmountable. Young Somalis were able to have a stake in the conversations and cultural shifts that, up to that point, were mostly facilitated by the older generation.

With this cultural shift over ten years ago, many young people began publishing books and taking part of the cultural production. Young men like Hikmaawi started writing biographies about their heroes, including the poet Abdi Adan Haad “AbdiQays”, Somaliland’s first president Abdirahman Tuur, and Mohamed Mooge Liban. This growing literary movement directly addressed the lack of accessible information about Somali history and cultural figures.

The effects also reached the diaspora. Kayd’s Somali Week Festival in London brought many of Hargeisa’s public intellectuals and cultural custodians to the UK. In earlier years, they invited poets like Hadraawi and Gaariye; later, young authors such as Hikmawi and Ahmed Karama took the stage to share their books. While Somalis are typically brought from across the Horn of Africa to London every year, there was a concerted effort to bring artists from Hargeisa and their logistics would be managed through the HCC.

To drive the point home further, I spoke to another former colleague, Aydarus Sange, who would come from Erigavo, Sanag, to work on the HIBF every summer. Originally part of the Anfac Readers Club, which mobilized young people around reading, he told me, “The HCC deeply enriched my life.” He paused, then added, “I gained knowledge about society and culture that enriched both my mind and heart. I also gained invaluable volunteer experience. It wasn’t easy, but it was worth it.”

He remembered how the exhibitions and discussions introduced him to new perspectives. “I found an opportunity to express myself and my creativity,” he said. “It gave me greater confidence and motivation.” He added that HCC created a network of friends and intellectuals that still shapes his life today. “Where I stand now,” he said, “I believe it played a part, and I am grateful for the experience.”

From “Sheeko iyo Shaahid” in 2008 to now, another vital legacy of the HCC and HIBF is the publications they’ve produced. Despite being an oral society, the love of reading and writing fostered through the “Reader’s Clubs” across Somaliland gave rise to books published in Somali.

In collaboration with translators and academics, Mohamad Ibrahim Warsame “Hadraawi’s” poems were translated and published in both Somali and English — a milestone that allowed Somali literature to engage with global audiences. Since then, the Poetry Translation Centre in the UK has continued this legacy, translating and performing the works of poets such as Yasmin Mohamed Kahin and Asha Lul, whose poetry collection The Sea-Migration/Tahriib was released in 2017.

What I gained most from this space was a sense of belonging, an extended community fostered by the people drawn to it. When I spoke again to Sahra Ladan, she emphasized the impact the Centre had on young people. “The brightest and best changemakers we see now,” she said, “irrespective of what industry they work in, came through this space. It truly shaped us.”

I gained a love of Somali cultural production and was able to be clued into what was happening in the motherland. I gained a strong respect for history, self-sovereignty, and self-expression. As someone who engaged with all the foreign visitors to the Book Fair, I found that each conversation revealed the city and Somaliland in a new light. I gained a deep appreciation for the determination of the city and its citizens. These visitors asked questions I hadn’t considered, recognized the challenges the country had faced, and made me realize just how revolutionary everything unfolding before me truly was.

When Adeero Jama Musse Jama told me, “There’s work to do,” he wasn’t exaggerating. The work ahead was vast, but so was the hope. It isn’t his work alone anymore, it belongs to all of us who grew up in that space. Despite pushback and challenges, the HCC and HIBF have persisted, embodying a larger cultural shift toward connection, creativity, and collective memory.

Returning to Hargeisa this year, it was beautiful to see all the new platforms and spaces created by the young people who once gathered there. In a city where it’s difficult to maintain cultural spaces, people still persist. The HIBF continues to run every year, with international guests and local pride. For a country that remains unrecognized, the Hargeisa Cultural Centre gave its people something far more powerful: the ability to recognize themselves.