Eddie Rich

Eddie Rich is the Acting Executive Director of the EITI. He has worked in development for over 20 years. In 1996-98 he got his first taste of development issues in a resource-rich environment when he was the DFID representative to Angola for 2 years. It soon became clear to him that we needed to move the debate well beyond aid. This was reinforced when he was part of the small team working on the UK Government’s ground breaking White Paper on International Development ‘Making Globalisation Working for the Poor’. He also co-authored a background study for this on poor performing states. He was Head of DFID’s Corporate Social Responsibility team when the nascent Publish What You Pay coalition came to DFID with an idea for a transparency initiative in the extractive sector in 2001. He continued to work on the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in those infant times until 2004 when he moved to Kenya as Deputy Head of DFID Kenya. Since 2007, Eddie has been the Deputy Head of the EITI International Secretariat.