ThoseGeneva policy
Ahmed Jama, the ex-asylum receiver who has become the first citizen of the city
The elected socialist was appointed to the presidency of the municipal council. The fight against discrimination is one of the engines of its commitment.
The president of the municipal council, the socialist Ahmed Jama, chose to pose in the rue de l’Hotel-de-Ville, on June 17, 2025.
Laurent Guiraud
- Socialist Ahmed Jama was elected president of the city’s municipal council.
- This former asylum applicant of Somali origin was naturalized Swiss in 2005.
- Calm, measured, it enjoys a certain recognition that goes beyond the PS.
This is not invented. Ahmed Jama was born on February 16 and when we align the four figures, we obtain 1602. It is as if Geneva and this former asylum applicant were predestined to meet, then to bind, so much so that he became the first citizen.
In early June, Ahmed Jama was elected by his peers as president of the municipal council. For a year, it is he who will direct the debates, will guarantee fair respect for speaking times and ensure the progress of an age of day that is still as plethoric.
“It is a testimony to the evolution of our society, which recognizes that each person, whatever their origin, can make a precious contribution to collective well-being,” said the socialist during an inauguration discourse which aroused the food applause of the Assembly and emotional mayor, Alfonso Gomez.
Attendant a few days later on the Terrace of the Café de l’Hotel-de-Ville, the lair of elected officials between two sessions, Ahmed Jama highlights the “symbolic” aspect of seeing, for the first time, “a black with a perch”. “I receive a lot of messages. People who ask me: “Is it possible to have an African in this position?” It frees something in the prohibitions, “he observes, while remaining lucid on” the permanence of racism “on a daily basis.
Forever the first
Breaking the glass ceilings, Ahmed Jama knows. He was previously “the first African Aforodendant” to occupy the position of group leader of the PS (to which he joined in 2007), to integrate the municipal council office and to chair the finance committee. “Is it normal, in 2025, in an international and multicultural city like ours?” Questions this 41 -year -old father, without departing from his usual placidity.
Ahmed Jama arrives in Geneva three decades ago. The end of the lake is supposed to constitute only a step on the London road, where relatives live. Somalia is plagued by civil war and, after several forced migrations inside the country, the family resolved to leave. But when he arrived in Geneva, the smuggler volatilized.
The family is hosted at the Presinge Foyer. A “magnificent”, but eccentric site, at a good distance from the Florence orientation cycle, where the 13 -year -old adolescent incorporates a reception class. The bus only spends once per hour. “It taught me punctuality,” smiles Ahmed Jama.
Fight against discrimination
The schooling of this good student continues without a hitch, once the subtleties of the French have controlled. “I can never thank my teachers enough,” he said, listing a list of names he would like to see in the article. However, it does not follow by their advice to take the collegiate path and opts for professional maturity at the CEC Madame de Staël. “I needed a diploma to find work immediately,” says Ahmed Jama.
His journey is marked by episodes which remind him of his “difference”, as when he cannot participate in ski camp in France, for lack of license. “How can we make a difference between two children who are in the same school and play together in the same courtyard?” he questions. As an elected official, he fights with others in favor of the extension of The back -to -school allowance to undocumented children.
On the other side of the mirror
Ahmed Jama became Swiss in 2005, carried out his military service in Payerne, began working at McDonald’s, before responding to a job offer for a job at the city’s civil status office. To his surprise, he is committed. He salutes the head of the service which, almost twenty years ago, took “the risk” of choosing a profile like his for a “sensitive” position.
Today, he works “on the other side of the mirror”, controls people’s identity, checks their documents. “By my journey, I sometimes manage to apprehend better than others certain situations,” he says.
The engine of his political commitment is to guarantee everyone “the pillars of dignity”: a roof, training and a salary, as he said in his speech as a candidate for the PS candidacy for the town hall last year. The section preferred Joëlle Bertossa to him, but Ahmed Jama does not refrain from trying his luck. In reality, nothing forbids nothing.
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