The Shabelle Campus of the Somali National University, Jaamacadda Ummadda Soomaaliyeed, is the institution’s oldest site and the seat of its central administration. It sits in the Hamar Weyne district of Banaadir region, in the heart of old Mogadishu, at Columbia Road. It lies within walking distance of Corso Somalia, the Unknown Soldier monument, the Central Bank of Somalia, the Ministry of Finance, the Banaadir Regional Administration, the Hawa Tako monument and the Hamar Weyne market. That downtown position, close to the seat of government, is part of why the campus came to carry the university’s headquarters functions.

Historically, Shabelle was the first campus of a university founded in 1954 and granted full university status in 1969. It went out of service along with the rest of the higher education system after the collapse of the state in 1991, and was returned to academic use following the reopening of the Somali National University in August 2014. Today it functions as both a teaching site and an administrative one. The faculties most commonly identified with the campus are Education, Law, and Social Science, the last of which includes the journalism and media department. Like SNU’s other campuses, it maintains a library and bookstore drawing on a university collection of more than ten thousand volumes.

The administrative heart of the campus is the rectorate. The Rector’s Office is based here, together with the offices of the Deputy Rectors, one responsible for academic affairs and another for administration and finance, and the supporting directorates that handle planning, registry and finance for the university as a whole. Correspondence addressed to the university’s leadership is directed to this campus rather than to any of the outlying sites.