Michael Baxter is an international development specialist with almost five decades’ experience at a technical and strategic level with development agencies and the private sector.

At the World Bank, Michael was manager of a range of technical, strategic and institutional activities. He worked primarily on rural production, infrastructure and related policy issues, especially in South Asia, Latin America, and Africa, where his final assignment was as director of the bank’s programs in five southern Africa countries. Over half of his thirty years with the bank was in overseas residential assignments, particularly in India and Mozambique. Prior to the World Bank, he spent seven years employed in academic and research activities in Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and Fiji.

Since 2009, Michael has managed a consultancy firm he founded in Maputo that serves the private sector, government and donors in Mozambique and elsewhere. Main company foci are foreign investor support, linkages between infrastructure and resource operations and local communities, agribusiness, and political and economic analysis.

Michael is an Australian. He was educated at the University of Melbourne (BA Hons., double first), the University of Papua New Guinea (MA), and the University of California Berkeley (PhD).