Ramla Ali Comes Home: Somalia Honors a Fighter Who Changed the Script
On a humid afternoon in Mogadishu, where the Indian Ocean throws salt into the breeze and the city’s traffic hums like a restless drum, a boxer walked into City Hall and rewrote an old story. Ramla Ali, Somalia’s first Olympic boxer and one of its most recognized athletes, accepted the Medal of Honor from the Governor of Banadir Region and Mayor of Mogadishu, Hassan Mohamed Hussein Muungaab—an emblem of a nation eager to celebrate achievement amid the churn of recovery.
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“She became an example to Somali youth who want to compete internationally and represent the country,” Mayor Muungaab said, praising Ali’s rise from displacement to the global stage. “We encourage the youth to follow in Ramla’s footsteps.” He added that the city is doubling down on sports programs and backing Somalia’s growing presence in the Olympic movement.
Days earlier, Ali had been decorated by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud for her role in “elevating the country’s name.” For a country rebuilding its institutions and sense of self, that phrase carries heft. The crowds that streamed into Aden Adde International Airport on Sunday—waving flags, filming on phones, and chanting her name—were proof that Ramla Ali isn’t just a boxer. She’s a story the country wants to tell about itself.
From Mogadishu to London—and Back Again
Ali’s journey is familiar to many in the Somali diaspora. Born in Mogadishu in 1989, she fled the civil war as a child with her family, after losing a brother to a mortar blast. The family navigated the limbo of migration—first Kenya, then London—where she found boxing as a teenager. The discovery was secret at first, the kind of hidden love that grows in the lingering hours after school and work. Boxing wasn’t an easy sell in a traditional household, but the ring offered clarity and a sense of mastery.
She started winning: England’s national novice title in 2015, then the elite national championships the following year. In 2019, she captured the African Zone featherweight crown. In Tokyo, at the 2020 Summer Olympics—delayed by a pandemic that had emptied stadiums and tested resolve—Ali became the first Somali boxer to compete on that stage. She turned professional in 2020. Today, at 35, she is still in the fight, with a pro record of 10 wins and two losses.
Ali has used her platform to push the sport open for others, especially women who didn’t see themselves in boxing’s mirror. In London, she helped create a free boxing program that gives women and survivors of violence a safe place to learn how to throw a punch—physically and metaphorically. The message resonates far beyond ringside: the body you inhabit is yours, and power can be taught.
A Hero’s Welcome and a Quiet Acknowledgment
At the airport in Mogadishu, the welcome wasn’t choreographed so much as felt. Federal officials, community leaders and kids with flag-painted cheeks packed into a scene that mixed ceremony with celebration. It wasn’t lost on Ali, who has spent years bridging identities—the Londoner who represents Somalia; the refugee child who became a global athlete.
“I have witnessed positive change in the country,” she said, acknowledging the fragile but steady work of rebuilding. Her words were cautious but warm, the kind of measured hope you hear from people who know how hard-won progress can be.
Why This Moment Matters
Sports as Nation-Building
Somalia is far from alone in turning to sport as a way to project unity and possibility. From Sierra Leone to Afghanistan, countries emerging from conflict have watched the fierce gravity of sports draw a fractured public together. It’s a kind of soft power that doesn’t require stadiums full of fans (though those help), only a figure who can carry a flag and a shared ambition in the same hands.
When Ali steps into the ring under Somalia’s blue flag, she compresses distances—between Mogadishu and London, between the challenges of the present and the hopes of a rising generation. In an age when more athletes carry multiple identities and passports, she is part of a global wave: diaspora talent returning to lift the countries that shaped their earliest memories. You see it in track, in football, in judo, and increasingly, in women’s boxing.
The Global Ascent of Women’s Sport
There is a larger story here too. Women’s sport is having a moment, not as a novelty but as a market and a movement. Television ratings for women’s football, basketball and combat sports have surged in recent years. Investment is catching up. Stories like Ali’s stretch the canvas: boxing gyms once staffed and governed by men are adapting to a new reality where women demand equal billing, serious coaching and safe spaces to train.
Ali’s career speaks directly to that shift. She has become a recognizable figure not only for Somalia, but for Muslim and African girls who rarely saw themselves in fight posters. Her presence—sometimes in a head covering, always with an air of calm focus—challenges lazy stereotypes. She is not exceptional because she is “allowed” to box; she is exceptional because she is good at it and generous with the responsibilities that come with being first.
Inside the Ring, Beyond the Ring
Discipline, Losses and the Long Game
Boxing is not a sport that forgives illusions. Ten wins and two losses is a record built on repetition—roadwork at dawn, sparring at noon, film study at night. Losses are part of the deal, and Ali has absorbed them with the quiet professionalism of someone thinking in seasons, not single bouts. The medal from Mogadishu will sit nicely on a shelf, but it will not win her next fight. That work continues where the cameras are sparse and the air smells like sweat and leather.
Still, honors matter. In places where public trust can be brittle, they signal who we celebrate and why. Ali’s citation from the president recognized a life that started in crisis and found discipline, a story thousands of Somali families know intimately. The mayor’s medal nodded to the young ones watching—teenagers in Mogadishu, Hargeisa, Nairobi, London, Minneapolis—wondering if their particular dream can fit inside their particular reality.
A Question for the Next Generation
What will Somalia do with this moment? Will city budgets carve out space for girls’ training facilities? Will national federations build pathways so that the next Ramla Ali won’t have to find a gym in secret or secure a trainer who understands a different set of cultural pressures? The answers lie in policy and persistence, not just pride.
For now, the image lingers: a champion returning home, hands carrying flowers, eyes scanning a crowd that looks like family. The applause rises and falls; the car door closes; somewhere a young girl asks her father if there is a boxing gym near their neighborhood. If sport is, as the old line goes, the theater of the unexpected, then this is its quiet script: a medal, a promise, and a door opening a little wider than before.
Ali’s next steps will unfold in training camps and under bright lights, but this week, the stage belonged to Mogadishu—and to a country that, in honoring a fighter, seemed to be honoring its own capacity to endure and to dream.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
