I am a strategy and economic development consultant with thirty years of experience across the UK and Africa. I founded my own consultancy in Cape Town in 2000 and relocated it to Paisley, Scotland, in 2021, where I now live with my wife and cat.
My career has taken me from small charity consulting in post-apartheid South Africa to large-scale national research programmes, economic development projects across Africa, and now policy thinking at a national level. I have completed 235+ projects for 210+ organisations, including government departments, international institutions, universities, charities, social enterprises and businesses. I have worked both independently and as a senior associate or manager embedded within other consultancies and research organisations.
I hold dual British and South African citizenship. Working across two continents, and having spent much of my career in sub-Saharan Africa, including time in townships and informal settlements, I understand poverty not as an abstraction but as a lived reality. This shapes how I think about economic development, industrial policy and the choices governments make about their economies.
This blog began as a professional outlet and has become something broader. I write long-form essays on subjects that genuinely preoccupy me: UK energy policy, public finances, national security, Scottish deindustrialisation, mentorship, AI and whatever else I can’t get out of my head. I write to make sense of things, and in the hope that others find it useful.