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Dr. Richard Dackam Ngatchou is a Canadian demographer of Cameroonian origin and former UNFPA Representative who has shaped census policy and family planning strategy across Africa. He holds a PhD from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (1987) and served as UNFPA Country Representative in Gabon, Congo, and the DRC (2005-2013). His leadership contributed to the creation of the DRC's first National Family Planning Programme and modernization of census operations in over 20 African countries. His research on maternal education and child mortality established foundational links between women's schooling and demographic transition. He now provides advisory services on census methodology, data governance, and capacity building.

Dr. Richard Dackam Ngatchou is a Canadian demographer of Cameroonian origin and former United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Representative who has played a central role in modernizing population and housing censuses and advancing reproductive health policy across Africa for over four decades. He earned his PhD in demography from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in 1987, with research examining how maternal education, health systems, and social conditions affect child survival in Sub-Saharan Africa. This work, published as Éducation de la mère et la mortalité des enfants en Afrique, demonstrated that maternal schooling is one of the strongest predictors of child survival—a finding that shaped his career-long focus on the intersection of education, health, and demographic policy. As UNFPA Regional Adviser in Demographic Analysis at CST-Dakar, Dr Dackam Ngatchou supported more than twenty countries in census planning and demographic analysis. He led the modernization of Senegal's 2003 census, introducing GPS cartography and thematic census products that became models for the region. His frameworks for reducing census costs while improving data quality were adopted across West and Central Africa. From 2005 to 2013, he served as UNFPA Country Representative in Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the DRC, his leadership contributed to the creation of the Programme National de Planification Familiale (PNPF), transforming fragmented donor projects into a permanent government-led program. This achievement is documented in Jane T. Bertrand's 2022 volume on family planning in the DRC. Since leaving the UN system, Dr Dackam Ngatchou has worked as an independent consultant on census methodology, monitoring and evaluation, and demographic governance. He continues to advise governments, UN agencies, and regional bodies on digital censuses, data sovereignty, and the demographic dividend.

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