An experienced and widely travelled education and development specialist with 50 years experience, including as Department for International Development (DFID) adviser for 22 years, then with FCDO and now retired. Richard brings extensive knowledge of the global education sector including education policy analysis and strategy development, teacher development, girls’ education, education in emergencies and post-conflict contexts, literacy/numeracy, political economy analysis, monitoring and evaluation, international development strategy, performance management, and procurement processes. Donor co-ordination/ harmonisation especially around multi-donor funded programming and Global Partnership of Education is a particular interest.
Prior to joining DFID he had been a Project Manager with SPRED 1 in Kenya and BIPP in Botswana, after several years as a secondary teacher of English and History in Uganda, further education lecturer, in UK, a primary and diploma college teacher trainer, inspector, curriculum designer and examinations setter in Malawi and Kenya. While working for DFID, he undertook the designing and writing of programme documents, business cases, and strategies to address policy gaps. These included Zambia Education SWAp, the support to Rwanda’s Education Sector Plan, various SABER publications, (while seconded to the World Bank) on Education Resilience and Workforce Development, Girls Education South Sudan (GESS), Support to Ethiopia General Education Quality Improvement Programme for Equity (GEQIP-E) in 2017/18 and FCDO draft Ethiopia Human Capital Development Strategy 2020-30. After working for DFID as a regional manager of education programmes in Botswana, Namibia, Eswatini, and Lesotho, he became Head of the Global DFID Education Cadre for two years focusing on staff development and education strategy covering Asia, Middle East and Africa. Since then he has headed multidisciplinary Human Capital Development Teams for DFID/FCDO in Rwanda/Burundi, South Sudan and Ethiopia. After retirement in 2022, as a consultant he has been providing coaching/mentoring sessions on team leadership to several African programme team leaders, and carrying out research, scoping missions, reviews, evaluations in Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Ethiopia for various organisations and development agencies.