A Programme Manager Built for Where Delivery Meets Development Finance

Five years at Caladium Consulting in Lagos gave me something that is hard to replicate in a classroom: the experience of sitting across the table from DFI appraisal teams with $100M+ in infrastructure funding at stake. The scrutiny that comes with that — rigorous feasibility standards, multi-party accountability, no margin for governance theatre — shaped how I think about programme management at every level.

In late 2025, I moved to Austria and enrolled in the MA EU Studies programme at FH Burgenland. This was not a retreat from professional life — it was a deliberate entry into the EU programme management world. I wanted to understand not just how EU-funded programmes are managed, but how implementing organisations actually operate: their procurement environments, their accountability to delegations, and the specific governance pressures that make EU programme delivery its own discipline.

The result is a profile that is rare in this space: African DFI experience that taught me the hardest version of multi-stakeholder programme governance, combined with formal EU programme management training and the PSM I and cPMA certifications that implementing organisations increasingly look for. I am not transitioning careers — I am extending an existing one into a new geography and funding context.