A job with BBC Somali radio service for Qalib

A SOMALI student who jinued MMU after seeing an advert in Sasca News has just landed a prestigious job with the BBC World Service.

He’ll be part of the launch team for the BBC’s brand new Somali TV service which will go on air in 2017 - 70 years since the BBC first started broadcasting in Somali on the radio.

This is a dream come true for Qalib who remembers listening to the BBC Somali Service as a young boy growing up in Somalia and it inspired his love for the language, its poetry and music. When his family had to leave and came to live in Manchester, the BBC Somali Service provided him with a link to his home country.

Qalib was able to start realisinghis dream of working for the BBC in 2015 when he saw an advert for the Man Met University journalism scholarship in the very first issue of SASCA news - a bilingual newspaper produced by Manchester’s Somali community and Man Met Uni’s journalism department.

Not only did Qalib, 29, who lives in Hulme, win the Al-Ha-

by Liz Hannaford

beeb scholarship enabling him to study full-time for a Masters degree in Multimedia Journalism, he then beat off 500 applicants from around the UK to win a place on a prestigious training scheme at BBC World Service for bilingual reporters.

The high point of the four-week internship at New Broadcasting House in London was broadcasting live on the BBC Somali Service to audiences in the Horn of Africa and across the diaspora.

Having impressed the editors at BBC World Service, he was encouraged to apply for a post in the soon-to-be-launched TV Service for Somalia. After a rigorous selection process, he beat a number of internal BBC candidates to secure the full-time post as Multimedia Broadcast Journalist. This will mean leaving Manchester and starting a new life in London.

Qalib said: “I wanted to make a positive contribution to the reconstruction of my home country and I thought the best way to achieve this was through fair, impartial and objective journalism.”