Wednesday March 24, 2021
Mogadishu (HOL) - Ahmed Ugas Mumin Ugas Warfa, a distinguished biology professor who specialized in botany and plant taxonomy - the identification of plants - has passed away in Mogadishu on Wednesday. Sources close to his family say he died from complications related to COVID-19.
In the world of botany, he was well-known for the identification and classifications of new endemic species - Cyclamen somalense and Crotalaria warfae, which he named after himself - in Somalia's northeastern Bari region.
Warfa began his academic career as a Somali National University student, where he earned his bachelor's degree in general agricultural sciences. Warfa travelled to Italy to further his studies and received his master's degree in botany from the University of Florence. He went on to earn his Ph.D. program in plant taxonomy at the University of Uppsala in Uppsala, Sweden.
After completing his post-graduate studies in Europe, Warfa returned to Somalia. He headed the agricultural department at Somali National University until the collapse of Somalia's government and institutions in 1991. The department regularly attracted the countries brightest students.
Prof Warfa opted to stay in Somalia following Siad Barre's ouster and began working as a senior advisor for the United Nation's peacekeeping mission. After several attempts on his life, including an ambush that led to him being shot five times, Warfa was urged by the UN to flee to Kenya and then the U.S., where he settled into a quiet living in Utah.
While in the U.S., Warfa found familiar work as an adjunct professor of plant systematics at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, a city 43 miles (69 km) south of the state capital Salt Lake City. While in Utah, Prof Warfa researched the genus Mertensia , a plant family - native to most North America, western China, and Northeastern China - with its center of diversity in the Rocky Mountains. He also taught biology at Salt Lake Community College during this time.
Prof Warfa returned to Somalia in 2009 and was appointed as an advisor to the Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. He remained in the position for six months until he said he grew disillusioned and resigned. Nearly two years later, Warfa launched his own unsuccessful bid for President in a bid to unseat his former boss.
In 2020, he was named Rector at Zamzam University of Science and Technology, a private university in Mogadishu.