Guardian · 10 hours ago

‘I Fell in Love with the Art of coffee-making’: the Female Baristas Shaking up Somalia’s Booming Cafe Scene | Global...

In Mogadishu, a city long defined by its conflicts, a quiet transformation is unfolding - one cup of coffee at a time. Saabiriin Hassan was 17 when she noticed there were no female baristas in Somalia and decided, simply, to become one, enduring early criticism that the work was unsuitable for a woman and warnings that no one would marry her for it. "I know my values and what I want in life, so I only focus on my goals," she says - and six years later, she trains a new generation of baristas, most of them women. The coffee shops spreading across Mogadishu are doing more than reshaping what people drink; they are creating spaces where young people gather, ideas circulate, and the boundaries of what a woman may do in public are being quietly, persistently redrawn. What Hassan's story reveals is something both ordinary and remarkable: that dignity and possibility can take root in the smallest acts of showing up, tying on an apron, and refusing to be told no.