Abdullahi Abdi Sheikh (born in 17 Dec 1980 at Mandera Kenya). He is an African Political Activist and Board Director at Amnesty International Kenya. He served as Director at Horn Gateway Centre. He ran successful public communication campaigns for some of the key political parties and business entities in the Horn and East Africa and attained positive results. He is a Media and Communication expert and former Head of BBC Somali Service. He led a cross-functional team through change and delivered the highest audience for the Somali Service at the BBC World Service. He initiated and executed the prestigious BBC Somali Young Female Poet of the Year Award, which takes place every year and is now very popular with Somali society.[1]While serving as head of BBC Somali Service, Abdullahi initiated and executed the prestigious BBC Somali Young Female Poet of the Year Award 2017, 2018, and 2019.[2]He successfully and effectively carried out assessments, research, and evaluations as well as feasibility studies in a wide range of areas in Communication for development.
Abdullahi Abdi Sheikh passed his graduation in Mass Communication at the International University of Africa (Khartoum-Sudan-2002-2005). He did his Master's in Communication Studies from the University of Nairobi. He studied Management of Media Institutions, Audience Segmentation, and Conflict and Communication among other units. His research focused on the use of media and social marketing in effective branding. He attained his doctorate in Communication Studies. He studied communication for development, communication, human rights, gender issues surrounding communication, and developing communication research and strategies. So far, he has commenced research on the Somali community’s perception of media presentation of terrorism in Kenya. He wrote more than 100 articles in his successful journey.
He started his career with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London-Nairobi. He had led the Somali team spread between London, Nairobi, Mogadishu, Hargeisa, Ethiopia, USA, and Djibouti to huge success in terms of audience reach, and budgetary savings. He initiated and executed two key annual events for female audiences; the BBC Somali Young Female Poet of the Year Award and BBC Somali Women Week. He relocated all BBC Somali radio and digital operations from London to Nairobi, achieving a saving of over 25% of the overall budget. On 28 October 2019, he resigned from his job. He wanted to join politics but quit in favor of his cousin Adan Daud Mohamed who has won the Wajir East seat on the Jubilee Party ticket.[3]
As a Chief Sub-Editor and Team Leader at BBC Monitoring, he was responsible for covering Somali and Arabic media, news writing, and news analyses and translations.
While his career with Brightview Imaging (BVI-Media), he was representing clients (institutions) to the public, working with them to succeed in reaching to region’s audiences. Catering to the challenges of reaching out to people in an ever-changing media environment and how people consume information, with the view of aligning organizations/brands with the next generation. During his work, he provides leadership for communication and Public Relations services for key organizations and business entities in the region. Further, he was engaged in overseeing strategic media planning, press outreach, campaign events, and all written and multimedia communication pieces for BVI Media clients. He was also responsible for budgeting, strategically planning, and following through with advertisement buys on television, radio, print, and social media.
