Mahdi Ali Hussein is a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at SONSAF. His main focus is M&E and socio-economic research in the Somaliland. Over the past five years working in Somaliland and Somalia, Mahdi has designed advanced M&E protocols and monitored different projects. Recently he supported a large-scale field-based observation effort on Somaliland Combined elections on assessing how the government following the elections procedure in Somaliland. Before working SONSAF, Mahdi, was an M&E team leader across Somaliland, and Somalia for national and international NGOs, including the Altai Consulting and Action Aid international as an external consultant. During his time with Altai (Tusmo) Consulting, he supervised major assessments for a wide variety of humanitarian and development programs. He has also developed an extensive network of experienced professional researchers that reaches out to each areas of the Somali area. Mahdi has a background in Economics, Rural development and Research and speaks fluent English and Arabic.