Pan-African News Wire: Somalia Federal Government Appoints Yussur Abrar As First Woman Central Bank Governor

Pan-African News Wire: Somalia Federal Government Appoints Yussur Abrar As First Woman Central Bank Governor

Somalia named Yussur Abrar as the country’s first female central bank governor, replacing Abdusalam Omer, who resigned after a United Nations monitoring group accused him of mismanaging the government’s money.

Abrar has spent the past 30 years working for international banks and insurance companies, Shador Hajji, a press officer in the presidency in the capital, Mogadishu, said by phone today. She will formally assume the role after a handover, the date of which has yet to be confirmed, he said.

Omer, who held the job for seven months, said he presented his letter of resignation “after the president told me that he was going to reshuffle all the government institutions, so before that I decided to quit,” he said in a phone interview.

Somalia’s government said on Sept. 6 that an investigation into a UN monitoring group report published in July showed its “condemnation of the Somali Central Bank Governor Abdusalam Omer’s stewardship of the bank was entirely unwarranted.”