Two Weeks in Arusha: Lessons in Leadership and Life

Nearly three months ago—April 7, to be exact—I was selected to participate in a Transformational Leadership course scheduled for June 9–20, 2025, in Arusha, Tanzania. I submitted my application on March 24, the final deadline and the same day I received the request to apply. It was during Ramadan. Fortunately, I was nominated and then selected for the course, which was tailored for leaders from both governmental and non-governmental institutions across Africa.

I was particularly excited because this would be my first time visiting Arusha—a city often referenced in Somali history. It was in Arusha that Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal signed an agreement with Kenya’s first President, Jomo Kenyatta, in October 1967, which ended the Shifta War, a conflict rooted in Somalia’s irredentist aspiration to unite Kenya’s Somali-inhabited Northern Frontier District (NFD) with the Somali Republic.

There’s no direct flight from Mogadishu to Arusha, so I traveled via Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa. Although the layover was brief, the gate for my connecting flight was changed twice, forcing me (and other participants of the training) to navigate across the terminal multiple times. When boarding time came, we were ushered onto an airport bus, even though the plane wasn’t ready. We remained inside the hot, unventilated bus on the runway for several minutes, sweating and asking the driver to open the windows. Eventually, we boarded a larger Ethiopian Airlines aircraft than the one I had flown from Mogadishu. The return flight from Kilimanjaro International Airport to Addis Ababa was also a big plane, which had onboard internet service priced at $10 for one hour or $25 for two hours, with access codes provided upon purchase.

We landed at Kilimanjaro International Airport on the evening of June 8. Unlike the busy Addis Ababa airport, ours was the only flight arriving at that time. I got to know other participants of the training we were traveling with outside the arrival gate as we waited for the bus taking us to Arusha. Since the airport is located in the Kilimanjaro Region, we had to drive to Arusha, the capital of the neighboring Arusha Region. The bus had internet, and we had the chance to inform our families that we had safely arrived in Tanzania after hours without internet. The roads in the Kilimanjaro area were well-built and scenic, especially the road leading to the airport. However, the roads in the Arusha Region were less developed; we had to drop off the tarmac road several times as construction was going on. After nearly two hours, we finally arrived at the MS Training Centre for Development Cooperation (MS TCDC), located about 20 kilometers outside Arusha.

Arusha is a cold city, and it rained on some days during my stay. At night, it was even colder. The MS Training Centre for Development Cooperation compound is a green environment with accommodation, a restaurant, and conference facilities. It provides an excellent environment for learning. Located outside Arusha city, it reduces distractions for trainees that come with staying in an urban area. This would be my home for the next 13 days.

I toured around the MS TCDC compound and visited Pan Africa House, where flags of African countries were displayed alongside photos of Tanzania’s founding father, Julius Nyerere, and the current president, Samia Suluhu Hassan. Our training room was named “Nyerere” in honor of Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s founding father. One of the rooms was called Somalia.