For 25 years, as his home city was engulfed in violent anarchy, Ahmed Jama lived abroad. He had been lucky enough to escape to Kenya, then Uganda and Britain where he studied catering in Solihull, and opened his first restaurant in London, on the Fulham Palace Road.

Jama came home to Mogadishu, Somalia’s seaside capital, in late 2008 and has since emerged as the city’s pre-eminent restaurateur. But back then, Islamist insurgents controlled much of the city and fought daily battles against a small force of African Union soldiers based at the airport.

Unbowed by the conflict and fuelled with seemingly dogged optimism, he opened his first restaurant at a time when Mogadishu was daily proving its reputation as the world’s most dangerous place.

“I