born 1950 in Stuttgart; came 1967 as a son of German emigrants to Namibia; Abitur at the German Higher Private School (HPS) in Windhoek; professional training in journalism in Munich (1971 to 1972) was followed by a short employment period at the German daily “Allgemeine Zeitung” in Windhoek; he studied Political Science and Sociology at the Freie Universität in (West-)Berlin and joined the anti-colonial liberation movement SWAPO of Namibia in 1974; from 1975 he was prohibited to re-enter Namibia until 1989 and South Africa until 1993; in 1977 he graduated in Political Science and received a PhD in the same discipline in 1980 at the University of Bremen, where he also obtained a venia legendi (Habilitation) in Development Studies in 1993.
First academic employments included positions at both the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development in (West-)Berlin and in the Namibia Project at the University of Bremen; since 1982 he was Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Kassel; after Independence he returned to Windhoek as the Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in 1992. He was chairperson to the Namibian-German Foundation for Cultural Co-operation (NaDS) between 1994 and 2000 and a member of the President’s Economic Advisory Council since its establishment.
In 2000 he became Research Director of the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden; since 2006 he has been Executive Director at the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala