Founder-Director
ReadDillon South Africa
Tim Hughes has worked and researched in 20 African and 17 non-African countries.
After undergoing Royal Naval Officer’s training at Dartmouth, Tim earned a BA (Hons) and MA from Africa’s leading university, the University of Cape Town (UCT). He tutored and lectured in Political Studies at UCT until 2001. He was a researcher at the Institute for Public Policy and for the Second Carnegie Inquiry in South Africa. He has delivered research papers at universities such as Princeton, Cambridge, Jerusalem, Lancaster and Dar es Salaam.
Tim has been a consultant to the BBC since 1994, working as an adviser on national elections, Zimbabwe and Nelson Mandela in particular. Tim has been a member of the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) since 1989. In 2001 he established SAIIA’s parliamentary office in Cape Town and ran its southern African Parliament’s Programme. Tim also founded SAIIA’s Governance of Africa’s Resources Programme which examined the mining, oil, forestry and fisheries sectors in Africa.
He has served as an adviser to the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum. He has also drafted scenario papers for the South African Presidency. He was also lead author of the United Nations Instraw Project on migration in Southern Africa. He has written a book on South Africa’s foreign policy in the post-apartheid period, and is the editor of some 22 publications on Africa. He has also written a study on terrorism in Africa as well as poverty policy in Africa.
Tim has consulted to numerous African governments, including the government of Malawi on the development of its tourist sector, and has been a consultant to European Parliament MPs on sub-Saharan Africa and presented to the European Council and Commission in 2009. In 2009 he served as rapporteur for the Ditchley Foundation on Nigeria. He has conducted risk analysis and research for some of the world’s leading companies in the mining, petroleum, communications, and airline sectors as well as for international trusts, aid agencies and foundations in Africa. Tim is a regular consultant to most of the major Embassies operating in Africa, particularly the European, American and Scandinavian.
Tim has completed research programmes in 20 African countries, including Morocco, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, as well as the United States, Britain, Norway, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Taiwan, Singapore, the Gulf States, Israel and Palestine.
A regular author of newspaper opinion pieces, Tim is a frequent expert commentator for the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, ETV and the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
