Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is a Somali politician who has served as the president of Somalia since May 2022, having previously held the office from 2012 to 2017. He is the founder and current chairman of the Union for Peace and Development Party. He was indirectly elected as President of the Federal Republic of Somalia on 15 May 2022, defeating the incumbent president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed. A civil and political activist, Hassan was previously a university professor and dean at SIMAD University, which he co-founded.
His first administration faced serious criticism for rampant corruption, media restrictions and abuse of power. In 2013, Hassan was named in Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. During 2014 he controversially welcomed the entry of Ethiopian National Defence Force troops into the African Union Mission to Somalia in the wake of the 2006 invasion. He was born in Jalalaqsi, an agricultural town situated in central Hiran in present-day Somalia, during the trusteeship period, and comes from a middle-class background. Hassan is married to Qamar Ali Omar and has seven children.
