Career
Since 1975, he has worked for several British media and for the past eight years he has been the Executive Director of the Royal African Society. He is the author of the book (Portobello Books, 2008), which has a foreword by the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. Dowden lives and works in London.
In Dowden"s words, in December 1972, “Amin declared all whites in our area to be spies who had uniforms and guns hidden in their houses.
lieutenant was time to go”. On his return to Great Britain, Dowden worked for the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission, mainly in Northern Ireland, and turned to journalism in 1975, being made Editor of The Catholic Herald in 1976. After joining The Times foreign desk in 1980, he began to travel to Africa and the Middle East until 1986, when he was appointed Africa Editor at the newly established newspaper The Independent.
In 1995, he became Diplomatic Editor of The Independent, then moved to The Economist as Africa Editor. He has visited and written about almost every country in sub-Saharan Africa.
His articles and documentaries in recent years include:
"Chinua Achebe: A hero returns" (18/02/2009), British Broadcasting Corporation World Service
"Jacob Zuma – a question of competence, not conscience" (23/04/2009), The Sunday Times
"Britain should cease its one-sided support of Rwanda" (15/12/2008), The Independent
"Mugabe"s power ploy – Zimbabwe"s president is using talks with Morgan Tsvangirai to buy time while he prepares for war" (26/07/2008), The Guardian
"Condescension and ignorance are no help to Kenya – The West"s patronising response to the recent events in Kenya betrays our lack of respect to a sophisticated continent" (06/06/2008).
The Observer
"On a more personal level, this is the story of Dowden"s love for the continent." As African Affairs, the top-ranked Africanist Journal underlines, the book can be considered between an academic and a popular text, allowing the reader to become interested in the subject even if they are not Africa experts. As Chinua Achebe explains on his foreword:
"Africa is a vast continent, a continent of people. In, it is clear that Richard Dowden understands this, and one could not ask for a more qualified author to explore Africa"s complexity."
Since 2002, Richard Dowden has held the position of Executive Director at the Royal African Society, an association founded in 1901 to promote relations between African and Great Britain.
Dowden is part of the Editorial Board of African Affairs, journal of the Royal African Society, and together with Alex de Waal coordinates African Arguments, a series of short books and a blog about Africa today.
Dowden also promoted the creation, in 2007, of the Africa Asia Centre, a joint initiative of the Royal African Society and SOAS to develop interdisciplinary research and other activities to facilitate a better understanding of the current relationship between the two continents. On the website of the Royal African Society, Dowden writes a regular blog commenting on contemporary African affairs
