Bart Fonteyne is a higher education governance, policy and strategy expert who has been involved for over 20 years in international cooperation with strong focus on higher education strategy & policy development, change management, capacity building, and funding strategies in many countries across the world. When conducting studies, Bart integrates a wide variety of inputs and data to generate inspiring new ideas and ways forward with people of diverse backgrounds, expertise, and outlooks. He uses participatory tools and methods to find the big picture in complex situations to develop scenarios, strategic plans, processes of change, and practical institutional arrangements for implementation and feedback. In previous studies and processes relevant specifically to this proposed study, Bart designed sustainable funding models, simulations and strategies for higher education programmes (e.g. for VLIR-UOS, which supports development partnership solutions with Flemish universities), financial reform in Mozambique for the overall national higher education strategy in Ethiopia as well as a research funding mechanism in Angola. He has also provided a study with simulation models and training workshops in developing and operating fund-raising strategies to the Pan African University in Algeria, Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. In a study for the European Union, he evaluated and redirected the strategy, management and operations of the EU - higher education Madad scholarship Trust Fund (EUTF) for Syrian refugees in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Bart has worked and built relationships with many international funding organisations or higher education intermediary funding organisations such as the European Union (DEVCO, EAC, ECHO, JAES), GIZ, DAAD, NUFFIC, the African Union, UNICEF, USAID, UNDP, the World Bank, Expertise France, the British Council and so forth. He holds a master’s in business administration and in European studies, as well as certificates in public policy and management at SOAS/university of London, leadership strategies for digital transformation at VLERICK, and regulation strategies at LSE, the London School of Economics and Political Science.