African Development Center

Director Leads by Example

Hussein Samatar wants to pass along the lessons of his success to fellow Africans.

Updated 05/04—Hussein Samatar, Executive Director of the African Development Center (www.adcminnesota.org), says that getting the word out about the African community’s business and housing goals is the essential first step toward forging community partnerships.

“I am working to help my fellow Somalis and all of the Africans living in Minnesota,” said Samatar. “People do not know enough about us. They may know that we are different, that we ask certain things of the system, but very few know how genuinely we are struggling to be self-sufficient.

“There is a great divide we must cross. We are far from everything that we knew. Yesterday, very hot. Today, very cold. Yesterday, tribal villages and civil war. Today, big city and civil government. Yesterday, cash and barter. Today, credit and lending. We have a great deal to learn and be responsible for, and we will not succeed until Main Street Minnesota has begun to learn our true nature and our situation.”

Samatar says he has become a Minneapolitan with a quite typical life. “If I changed my name to John Smith, you could read a lot of my resume and I’d seem very familiar. I’m an executive with a family and a house and car. I’m involved in my neighborhood. I worry about saving for my children’s college. It’s this experience of achieving an American life, with the help of many friends here, that I seek to pass on to fellow African immigrants.”

Samatar came to Minneapolis in the early 1990’s to escape Somalia’s bloody collapse into anarchy. Like many in what he describes as the “second wave” of Somali refugees, he settled here because he had relatives among the original group of Somalis that missionaries in the Lutheran Church relocated to the United States after the outbreak of civil war in 1991.

Many more waves of Somalis have followed, bringing the local population to an estimated 50,000, the largest of any U.S. city. The metro’s total African population is estimated at 70,000, Samatar says.

Samatar arrived here “without five words of English” (He, like the majority of Somalis, speaks Somali and Arabic; Italian, he said, is his third language, owing to Italy’s former colonial presence in Somalia; he also notes that he has begun to learn Spanish to aid his outreach to partners in the community). But he had a college degree and an appreciation for the city’s strong job market, education system, and social services.

After completing ESL courses, he was able to “Americanize” his credentials, earning an MBA from St. Thomas University. He then entered an eight-year career in commercial banking with Norwest Bank and then Wells Fargo.

“In my work with the bank, I helped individuals advance their businesses. And I began to realize my job skills could help in community economic development.”

Samatar left the bank in 2003 to join the Neighborhood Development Center, where he became the organization’s senior lender and special projects manager. For many months Samatar split his time evenly between the NDC and directing the African Development Center, but since May 2004 has been full time at the ADC.

“The ADC is really just getting going,” Samatar said. “I am very busy organizing resources both within the African community and in the broader community development system.”