Paul Engel is Director of the European Centre for Development Policy Management in Maastricht, the Netherlands. He is a Dutch national who worked in Peru, Ghana and Colombia, as an evaluation researcher, rural communication specialist and project manager, respectively. For his work he travelled extensively in Africa, Latin America and Europe. In the Netherlands, he directed the international extension programme of the Ministry of Agriculture and lectured at the Department of Communication and Innovation Studies, Wageningen University. He directed research programmes on knowledge management in agriculture and developed a soft systems approach towards facilitating capacity building, innovation and learning for development. With his team, he developed and published a participatory action-research methodology to strengthen the innovative capacities of local and institutional actors and to design effective multi-stakeholder co-operation and communication strategies (RAAKS). Prior to joining ECDPM, he worked as an international consultant and taught management and organisation for rural (business) development at Concepción University, Chile, where he established and directed the Centre for Studies and Management of Sustainable Rural Development, CEDRO. During this period he studied the role and management of knowledge networks and agricultural chains in development and developed a particular interest in the relationship between evaluation, management and organisational learning.