Early Years
Shermarke, who was from the Majeerteen clan, was born in 1919 in the town of Harardhere in the north-central Mudug region of Somalia.
Raised in Mogadishu, he attended Qur'anic schools and completed his elementary education in 1936. He then embarked on a career as a trader and later as a civil servant in the Italian colonial administration.
In 1943, the year of its inauguration, Shermarke joined the incipient Somali Youth League political party. He entered the British administration's civil service the following year.
While still a civil servant, Shermarke completed his secondary education in 1953. He earned a scholarship to study at the Sapienza University of Rome, where he obtained a Ph.D. in Political Science. In 1960, his son, Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, who would later become Prime Minister of the Somali Transitional Federal Government, was born.
Read more about this topic: Abdirashid Ali Shermarke
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