Hassan Ali Khayre

Early life

Hassan Ali Khayre was born in the central Somalian town of Galhareeri, some 50 kilometers from El Buur, to a family from the Murusade tribe, a branch of the larger Hawiye tribe. He graduated from primary and secondary school in Mogadishu. At the onset of the civil war, Khayre moved as a refugee to Norway in 1991, where he enrolled at the University of Oslo in 1994. While in university, Khayre was active in the Somali Students Association, according to a friend.

Khayre is a dual citizen of Norway and Somalia.

After graduating in 1998 with a degree in political science and minor in sociology, Khayre went on to complete his MBA at Edinburgh Business School, the graduate school of business of Heriot-Watt University, in 2001. He spent several years staying in the UK.

Early career

After graduation, he moved back to Oslo where he began working with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in 2002 at their headquarters as a coordinator for their readiness forces.

Khaire briefly left the NGO for a few years to pursue business endeavors but in 2006 he returned to the NRC as an area manager. He remained at the NRC for another 9 more years as he worked his way up to County Director and eventually the Regional Director for the Horn of Africa. In June 2012, when Hassan Khaire was regional director for the NRC, a NRC caravan was attacked in northeastern Kenya, the Norwegian daily Verdens Gang reported. One of the drivers was killed on the spot. Several others were shot and injured. One Norwegian, one Canadian and two others from Pakistan and the Philippines were driven away by the kidnappers. Four days later they were released by a local militia group after a dramatic shootout on the other side of the border in Somalia. The NRC which was led by Hassan Khaire, was found guilty in gross negligence in a Norwegian court for poor planning of the security. Hassan Khaire has also been under investigation for coruption when working for the British company Soma Oil, but the investigation was dropped because of lack of evidence, although the investigators maintained that it still was reasons for supsicions.

After nearly a decade in the NGO field, Khaire moved on to the public sector joining Soma Oil & Gas as an Executive Director for Africa. According to the company's website, Hassan Khaire has been with the country since its inception in 2013.

In February 2016, a leaked memo, sent by a United Nations watchdog to diplomats in the United Kingdom and Norway, revealed that the executive director for Africa at Soma Oil and Gas was under investigation by the United Nations Monitoring group for Somalia and Eritrea for possible ties to extremist groups in East Africa, including al-Shabaab, which had claimed responsibility for a series of deadly terrorist attacks in Somalia. The UN letter, dated 17 February 2016, showed investigators raised concerns over Khaire’s possible links to extremist groups after obtaining his “electronic contact list”, which it analysed with the cooperation of an unidentified UN member state.They all maintained their innocence from the beginning and were eventually cleared by their accusers after rigorous scrutiny. The UN Somalia Eritrea Monitoring Group (SEMG) said that it "has not found credible evidence of such links and that, in the absence of any new information received by the SEMG clearly demonstrating such links, we now consider this line of inquiry to have reached a conclusion.”

Resignation from Soma

On 23 February 2017, Soma Oil & Gas announced on their website the resignation of Khayre as the Executive Director for Africa.

On 23 February 2017, President Mohamed announced on Twitter the appointment of Khayre as the new Prime Minister of Somalia. Prior to his appointment, Khayre had never held public office, although over the course of his career he has worked with a range of high-level executives and government officials in various capacities.

In a session held on March 1, 2017, Members of Parliament overwhelmingly approved Khayre's appointment as Prime Minister, 231 of the MPs endorsed the selection. On 21 March 2017, Khaire thanked lawmakers for their overwhelming support. and submitted his nomination for the Cabinet Ministers Somalia, on 29 March 2017 they were approved by the parliament.

He also vowed to tackle corruption by prosecuting individuals involved, regardless of their position, and chaired his first official Cabinet meeting, he reminded the gathered Ministers of his and their duties as statesmen, noting that the administration's focus should be on strengthening the security sector, accelerating institutional reform.