Tapscott, Chris. Prof. Chief Technical Advisor South Africa

He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Government at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. He has held leadership positions in several universities, including those of director of the Nambian Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Namibia, founding director of the School of Government at the University of the Western Cape, and, for ten years, he was the Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences (EMS) in the same institution. He has held also held leadership positions in various national and international research associations including those as Co-Director of the South African – German Centre for Development Research, Co-chair of the International Political Studies Association Panel on Comparative Studies on Local Government and Politics, and as Vice-President (Africa) of the International Research Society for Public Management In addition to a distinguished career as an academic, he has over forty years’ experience in support of technical assistance programs in South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Sierra Leone, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and South Sudan. Consultancies undertaken include those on behalf of the FAO, UNICEF, UNFPA, UNDP, WFP, the World Bank, the African Bank, ILO, EU, SIDA, NORAD, GTZ, FINNIDA, DFID, and the IRDC. His expertise includes public sector reform, strengthening governance systems, and administrative efficiency. In the immediate aftermath of apartheid in South Africa he was the coordinator of expert technical teams responsible for the drafting of White Papers on the Transformation of the Public Sector and on Public Sector Training.

In 1997 he was also a member of a Strategic Task Team, advising the Presidential Review Commission on the Reform and Transformation of the Public Service in South Africa. Further related experience includes that as a monitoring and evaluation adviser for a UK funded programme of Support to Public Enterprise Restructuring in South Africa, adviser on enhanced prison governance to the South African Department of Correctional Services, and as an adviser on corporate governance to the National Revenue Authority in Sierra Leone. Since 2018 he has been contracted as a senior policy adviser by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) working on policy and project development in South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Eswatini, Mozambique, and South Sudan. My work in the governance sector has included analysis of the constraints to effective governance, technical assistance in the design of governance systems and practices, project and programme evaluation, and the training of senior management teams.