The collaboration between the University of Trieste and Somali National University (SNU) has been renewed, with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) committing the two academic institutions to continue developing collaborative projects until 2031.

Those who signed the agreement were Prof. Valter Sergo, Vice Rector of UniTS, and Prof. Hassan Osman Ga'al, Rector of the University of Mogadishu. 

The two universities have been involved in a large bilateral Italy-Somalia project for several years, which aims to support the growth of the Somali National University, contributing to the training of teachers and researchers. 

As part of this project, Prof. Ga'al himself, Dean of the Faculty of Economics at the Somali university, was a visiting professor at the University of Trieste. Subsequently, a number of students from Mogadishu attended a Master's degree course at the Department of Economics, Business, Mathematics and Statistics at UniTS. 

Of those students, two are now researchers at the Somali National University and are actively collaborating on research and consolidating collaboration relations. 

The recently signed MoU intends to foster cultural, scientific and educational cooperation for the benefit of the students, teaching and research staff and technical and administrative staff of both universities. The areas in which the agreement will be implemented focus in particular on the development and sharing of good practices, which take into account the historical cultural ties between Somalia and Italy. 

Collaboration with Italian universities is, in fact, particularly valuable for Mogadishu, which is aiming to further develop its legal-administrative apparatus and education sector.

Still today in Somalia, administration, law, school and university are greatly influenced by Italy. In fact, they have absorbed procedures, organisational processes and sectoral terminology from Italy in the Italian language.

Within the Memorandum of Understanding, the collaboration between UniTS and SNU will involve the disciplinary areas of Italian language and literature, the comparison of legal, political and regulatory systems, economics and the environment, in particular with regard to sustainable growth models. The areas of international relations and development cooperation will also be involved, as well as institutional cooperation, without neglecting the consolidation of basic scientific disciplines, such as physics.

The signing of the MoU was preceded on Friday 28th February by a well-attended public event, the panel discussion ‘Quo Vadis Somalia?’. During the meeting, Rector Hassan Osman Ga'al discussed the future of Somalia and relations with Italy together with Professors Ilaria Micheli (IUSLIT), Federico Battera (DiSPeS), Giuseppe Borruso (DEAMS) and Federico Donelli (DiSPeS) and with moderation from PhD students Sara Cosatti and Beatrice Marchesini. 

Within the framework of international cooperation activities with Somalia, the project ‘Climate Change, Conflicts and Migration: the Ethiopian-Somali Corridor and the Possible Impacts of Infrastructural Development’, has also started, coordinated by Prof. Federico Donelli, Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political and Social Sciences. The project was co-funded by the University with an amount of €15,000, under the Call for International Cooperation Projects of the Departments - Year 2025.

Among the project's objectives is develop a way of monitoring the political-institutional situation in the Somali Peninsula, capable of providing recommendations to Italian and European NGOs active in fostering macroeconomic stability, increasing civil society's capacity to promote sustainable socio-economic behaviour, and developing the Italian public's awareness of the impact of climate change on the phenomenon of migration flows.