Chaos, Courage, and Change in Somalia
Mahad Wasuge’s memoir is not an outsider’s book about a “failed state.” Written for his children, for Somalis, and for anyone who still only knows the country through headlines.
Abdirahman Samawade · September 20, 2026 · 2 min read
Book review. Mahad Wasuge, Chaos, Courage and Change in Somalia: Growing Up, Learning, and Leading Through Conflict.
A must-read memoir.
Chaos, Courage, and Change in Somalia is not an outsider’s book about a “failed state.” This is Mahad Wasuge’s own story of growing up, learning, and leading through nearly four decades of conflict, written for his children, for Somalis, and for anyone who still only knows the country through headlines.
Wasuge is the best of what Somalia can do as an academic and public intellectual if someone stays. After more than four years as a researcher at the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies in Mogadishu, he founded Somali Public Agenda in 2018 because too much writing on the country was produced without Somali experience, the Somali language, or Somali stakes.
Through SPA, he established a homegrown institution focused on research, public dialogue, policy design, and training. His creations include SPA Research and SPA Dialogue; the Maamul Wanaag and Adeeg Wanaag podcasts; the Policy Lab and Learning Lab, which train young researchers, bloggers, and public servants; and now public polling and national dialogue work that reaches beyond Mogadishu.
I knew him through that work. I am one of the readers in the diaspora who has learned a great deal from SPA’s work. He has helped people like me understand how government and public services work in the hinterland, not just in the capital that the world already thinks it knows.
He’s a researcher, teacher, podcaster, father, and the face of a homegrown intellectual the country needs: a young man from Buulaburte who sought secondary education from Beledweyne to Mogadishu for university, then built institutions so the next generation wouldn’t have to start from zero.
He is a success story for those who chose not to leave — and proof that the real Somalia is bigger than the Somalia the West usually hears about.
If the book is not on your shelf yet, buy it. The proceeds go to the man who stayed and built the institution the rest of us have been reading.
By Abdirahman Samawade · Political analyst
