Abdirahman Aynte is the Managing Director of Laasfort Consulting Group, a regional advisory firm focused on turbocharging transformations on governance and development. Previously, he was the Director of Planning and Strategic Partnerships with the UN, based in Jordan.

Between 2015-2017, Mr. Aynte was the Minister of Planning and International Cooperation of Federal Republic of Somalia. Before joining the government, Mr. Aynte co-founded and was the first Executive Director of the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies (HIPS), the leading think tank in Somalia.

For 12 years before that, Mr. Aynte was a journalist the BBC and VOA based in London and Washington DC, and a Senior Editor Al Jazeera English based in Doha, Qatar. He has a BA degree in journalism and an MA in government from the Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC.