Paul Davies is a former Director of PricewaterhouseCoopers UK and Adam Smith International, where he provided and managed multi-million, multi-year, multi-disciplinary technical assistance for a wide range of governments and international agencies in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, focusing on economic and government reform.
Paul was with Adam Smith International for 20 years, rising to the company Executive Team and Director of Governance and Public Finance Management, overseeing major programmes in Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Somaliland, South Sudan, Burundi, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ghana and Ethiopia. By winning and implementing numerous successful programmes, and through a keen commercial as well as technical focus, he helped grow Adam Smith International to become a leading, technically diversified, independent UK international development firm, with a turnover of £157m at its peak.
He was one of the first international advisers to be active in Afghanistan in the first half of 2002, following the military defeat of the Taliban. He went on to play a pivotal role in UK development assistance to Afghanistan until 2012, supporting the UK and Afghanistan governments to design and implement numerous technical assistance programmes which complemented the myriad support provided by other countries to Afghanistan. In Afghanistan he directed the UK’s award winning tax reform programmes which saw Afghanistan’s annual tax collection increase eight-fold and the tax-GDP ratio improve from 2% to 11%, overtaking many countries more developed than Afghanistan.
Paul has MSc and BSc degrees from the London School of Economics, is a qualified IMF Tax Administration Assessor, and is trained in intervention/programme impact evaluation.