Somali-Led, From the Board to the Field.

Mohamed Adan Barre has spent his life investing in the people of Gedo — first as an entrepreneur, then as a philanthropist, and today as Chairperson of the Board of Lifeline Gedo, the organisation he helped found in 2005.

Born in June 1969 and raised in Gedo region, he built a reputation as one of the region's most successful entrepreneurs. He chose to direct that success outward. Long before his giving became institutional, it reached orphans and families with nothing — widening access to essential services, strengthening food security, and creating income for households that had none.

In 2008 he became the driving force behind the establishment of Dhamasa Primary School, personally funding teachers' salaries and school facilities for four years until Norwegian Church Aid assumed full support in 2012. Children in Gedo were taught because one man decided they should be.

Founding Lifeline Gedo

That same instinct led him, in 2005, to be among the founders of Lifeline Gedo — an organisation created by Gedo's own people to serve Gedo's own communities, and to bring external support to a region the world had largely overlooked. Twenty-one years on, he chairs its Board.

Statesmanship and peacebuilding

His contribution extends well beyond humanitarian work. During the formation of Jubaland State in 2012 — a turbulent and contested process — he was among the primary decision-makers and a steadying presence throughout. He convened dialogue on political representation that helped carry the region toward popular elections, and argued publicly for systems of power-sharing not organised around clan.

In 2018 he brought the same authority to the reconciliation of the Murule and Marehan clans, whose long-standing dispute over shared resources had cost lives. The settlement he helped broker brought that violence to an end.

A devoted Muslim and a respected religious figure, he combines moral standing, commercial judgement and a proven record as a peacemaker — the qualities that make his leadership of our Board consequential for the communities we serve.

Suad Mohammed Abdi brings a rare combination to our Board: legal training, a technologist's interest in how justice is actually delivered, and an advocate's commitment to the dignity of girls and women.

She holds an LLB from Riara University and an LLM in Law from Middlesex University Dubai, with a growing professional focus on legal technology, artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation — the tools that increasingly determine whether legal systems can serve people at scale. Her legal experience spans paralegal and legal support roles, including legal research, case management, drafting, litigation support and client-facing work.

Beyond the legal field, she has worked in education and student support, with a particular interest in building learning environments that are safe, respectful and genuinely empowering for the young people within them.

Menstrual health advocacy

As a menstrual health advocate, Suad works to promote menstrual health education, break the stigma surrounding menstruation, and ensure girls and women have accurate information, access to supportive resources, and the confidence and dignity that follow from both. For an organisation whose nutrition, WASH and protection programmes reach women and girls every day, that advocacy is not peripheral to our work — it speaks directly to it.

She is multilingual in Arabic, English, Urdu and Turkish, and is driven by a commitment to using her skills and her voice to contribute to meaningful change in society.

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Mohamed Abdi Osman is an experienced businessman, entrepreneur and community leader whose professional career spans more than four decades across government contracting, transportation, logistics, construction and real estate.

Since beginning his career in 1980, he has built and managed businesses, overseen operations, coordinated projects and worked with a wide range of public and private-sector institutions. His involvement in government contracts and commercial projects has given him detailed working knowledge of procurement processes, contract management, transport and logistics operations, construction and property development.

What he brings to the Board

Four decades of operating across multiple sectors have sharpened his judgement in business management, negotiation, strategic decision-making, financial oversight and stakeholder relations. For a humanitarian organisation handling institutional funds and complex procurement, that commercial discipline is directly useful — it is the same scrutiny our donors apply.

As a Board Member he is committed to supporting good governance, transparency, accountability, responsible resource management and sustainable growth. He brings a strong sense of responsibility and a practical approach to organisational challenges, contributing to the strategic discussions and decisions that advance Lifeline Gedo's mission.

Abdifatah Ahmed Mohamud leads Lifeline Gedo as Executive Director, a role he has held since 2021 after eight years running the organisation's operations. He is an operations and project cycle management specialist with a decade of field experience coordinating emergency, health, nutrition, livelihoods and governance programmes.

Leading the organisation

He works directly with the Board on policy, fundraising and the organisation's visibility; leads strategic planning and the annual budget; and serves as Lifeline Gedo's principal spokesperson to partners, media and the public. He has built and maintained the institutional relationships that now connect the organisation to IFAD, ECHO, FCDO, Irish Aid, WFP, the World Bank, GIZ and the Somalia Humanitarian Fund, and represents LLG at the European Humanitarian Forum, the Africa Climate Summit and COP30.

Building the systems first

From 2013 to 2021 he served as Operations Manager, where he established the procurement, finance, HR and logistics systems that underpin the organisation's compliance record today — setting internal controls, aligning procedures with organisational values, and resolving process inefficiencies through analysis rather than instinct. It is the reason donors now allocate to Lifeline Gedo directly.

National representation

In August 2026 members of the Somali NGO Consortium elected him as one of the NGO representatives on the Advisory Board of the Somalia Humanitarian Fund for the 2026–2028 term. The Board advises the Humanitarian Coordinator on the Fund's strategy, risk management, transparency and performance, and NGO representatives serve on behalf of the wider NGO community. He also holds Lifeline Gedo's seat on the Somali NGO Consortium's Mogadishu Advisory Board, to which the organisation was elected in 2026.

Education

• Master of Arts in Humanitarian Assistance, The Fletcher School, Tufts University (2021) — capstone on building community resilience against food insecurity in Gedo
• Humanitarian Intensive Course, Harvard Humanitarian Academy (2017)
• Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting), SIMAD University, Mogadishu

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Osman Mohamed Abdullahi is a senior humanitarian and development programme management specialist with more than twenty years of progressive experience across Somalia and the Horn of Africa. He has served as Lifeline Gedo's Programmes Director since January 2021.

What he leads

He provides strategic and technical leadership for the planning, implementation, quality assurance and operational oversight of every programme we deliver — emergency response, resilience, recovery and long-term development. Reporting to the Executive Director, he leads programme design, donor engagement, proposal development, grants oversight and field-level implementation, and represents the organisation in cluster meetings, government coordination forums and consortium platforms.

He has managed multi-sector programmes funded by ECHO, the World Bank, FCDO, USAID, Irish Aid, the Somalia Humanitarian Fund, GFFO and QFFD, with technical depth across food security and livelihoods, WASH, education in emergencies, nutrition, resilience programming and protection mainstreaming.

He also leads our evidence work. He compiled the Elwak multi-sectoral needs assessment published on our reports page, and oversees the assessment programme that now shapes how our interventions are designed.

Education

• Executive MBA in Leadership & International Business (2026)
• Master of Development Studies, Mount Kenya University — in progress
• Bachelor of Development Studies, Mount Kenya University (2018)
• Diploma in Project Management & Development, Kenya Institute of Development Studies (2014)

He works in Somali, English, Swahili and Oromo, with working Arabic.

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Asma Ibrahim Barre coordinates Hanaano — the cross-border programme to prevent child wasting in the Mandera Triangle — from Lifeline Gedo's Dolow office. She leads the project's planning and day-to-day delivery, its work with community leaders, authorities and partners, and its monitoring, reporting and budget follow-up.

Alongside Hanaano she co-chairs the Area Based Coordination (ABC) group for Dolow, Belet Hawo and Elwak districts, which brings partners, ministries and local authorities together to map services, coordinate shock response and run rapid needs assessments and joint site visits.

She returned to Lifeline Gedo in July 2026 after more than four years with UNHCR — as Community-Based Protection Associate in Galkacyo, where she acted as protection cluster lead for North Mudug, and before that as Field Assistant in Dolow, working with the camp coordination and camp management cluster. From 2017 to 2021 she was Lifeline Gedo's Senior WASH Officer in Belet Xaawo, Bardhere and Dolow under the partnership with Concern Worldwide, and the focal person for early warning, early action data.

Asma holds a Bachelor of Science in Project Management from Galkacyo International University and a Diploma in Community Development and Social Work from SAMTEC College.

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Safia Mohamed Sheikh was born and raised in Mandera, at the point where Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia meet — the same border area her work now serves.

She joined Lifeline Gedo in 2013 as an officer and is now a Project Coordinator, thirteen years in one organisation. Over that time she has coordinated across BRCiS from its first phase through to its third, Hanaano — the cross-border programme against child wasting in the Mandera Triangle — and a succession of emergency and resilience projects in Belet Xaawo, Dollow and Bardhere. The programmes she has coordinated have reached more than 100,000 people.

Her specialism is livelihoods, Self-Help Groups and women-led programming, and her argument is a practical one. When a season fails, women are producers and carers at the same time: they stretch what food remains, walk further for water, and still have to feed children whose needs have not paused for the weather. That double burden is where a climate shock becomes a wasted child, and it is also where the intervention has to land. Where women in Gedo have reached savings groups, markets and small climate-smart enterprises, the returns have gone straight into their children's food, health and schooling.

She has carried that case well beyond Gedo. In July 2024 Irish Aid invited her to speak for Lifeline Gedo at the official launch of Hanaano in Nairobi, during the visit of Ireland's Tánaiste, Micheál Martin. In September 2025 she opened Hanaano's session at the Africa Climate Summit at the IGAD pavilion in Addis Ababa. In November 2025 she represented the organisation at COP30 in Belém, covering women's leadership in Self-Help Groups, gender-responsive climate action and the link between nutrition and resilience.

She works in Somali, English and Swahili.