Osman Yusuf Kenadid

Osman Yusuf Kenadid (; ; 1889 – 14 August 1972) was a Somali poet, writer, teacher and ruler. Born in Ceel Huur in 1889, he went on to create the Osmanya alphabet for writing Somali. He died on 31 August 1972 (aged 83) in Mogadishu.

Biography Kenadid grew up in the town of Galkayo, situated in north-central present-day Somalia. He served as a leader in the Majeerteen Sultanate of Hobyo and was the son of the polity's founder, Sultan Yusuf Ali Kenadid. He is also the father of Yasin Osman Kenadid. Kenadid hails from the Osman Mahamuud Majeerteen Darod clan.

Also a writer, Kenadid published many works on various subjects related to Somali history and science, including textbooks on the Somali language, astronomy, geography and Somali philosophy. He borrowed significantly from the vast ancient Somali cultural repository, working towards a renaissance of this rich past.

In the early 20th century many young Somalis felt it was of utmost importance to have a national script but their nationalism was decidedly non-Arab. In order to assert their sovereignty, many felt that the Somali language, unique in the world, ought to have a unique script, thus in response to a national campaign to settle on a standard orthography for the Somali language (which had long lost its ancient script), Kenadid devised a phonetically sophisticated alphabet called Osmanya for representing the sounds of Somali. With Kenadid's arrest, all efforts to develop a standard orthography for the Somali language abruptly came to a halt for the next 25 years.

The rise of nationalist sentiment that followed the end of the Second World War – and especially the birth of the Somali Youth League political party, of which Kenadid was a founding member – brought about a revival of interest in and use of the Osmanya script.