Ali Mahdi Muhammad (1 January 1939 – 10 March 2021) was President of Somalia from 26 January 1991 to 3 January 1997, succeeding Siad Barre and preceding Abdiqasim Salad.
Biography[]
Ali Mahdi Muhammad was born in Jowhar, Italian Somaliland in 1939, and he worked as an entrepreneur in Mogadishu before entering politics and running for Parliament in 1968. When the Somali Civil War broke out in 1991, Ali Mahdi Muhammad became a leader of the United Somali Congress, but he engaged in factional infighting with Mohamed Farrah Aidid's Somali National Alliance faction. An international conference in Djibouti recognized Muhammad as President of Somalia, but he lost re-election in 2000 and retired to his farm on the outskirts of Mogadishu. He died in Nairobi, Kenya on 10 March 2021 at the age of 82.