Richard Tibandebage

RICHARD TIBANDEGAGE, the Deputy Director of Public Relations and Policy, is a retired civil servant. Most of his 39-year public service career was divided between the President’s Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the former, he was mainly tasked with matters of regional cooperation and conflict resolution, with particular focus on Comoros, Zaire/Congo DRC, Rwanda and Burundi. Among the tasks, he was a member of the Facilitation Team for the Burundi Peace Negotiations (1998-2000) and thereafter served on the technical team overseeing the Burundi Peace Accords implementation (2000-2003).

Richard graduated from University of Dar es salaam with BA (Hons) in International Relations and French in March 1976 and joined the Ministry of National Culture and Youth, Department of Research and Planning where he worked on plans for establishing the Eastern and Central African Centre for Research on Oral Traditions and African National Languages in Zanzibar. He was transferred to President’s Office in 1977 and worked mainly on regional (Eastern and Central Africa) matters; again transferred to Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1987 where he was posted to Embassies in Germany (1988-94) and Belgium (1994-98). In 1998 he was attached to Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation and joined the Burundi Peace Negotiations facilitation office. Upon completion of the office’s functions Richard returned to President’s Office and continued to work on Burundi and Eastern &Central Africa in general until 2004. He was thereafter posted Tanzania High Commission in Canada where he stayed until his retirement from public service in August 2015.

BUDEFO is lucky to have such a multilingual person seasoned in diplomacy, international relations and conflict resolution.