Nic Spaull is a Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation within the Global Education team. His work centers on improving Foundational Literacy and Numeracy at scale in sub-Saharan Africa. Before that Nic was an Associate Professor of Economics at Stellenbosch University and published widely on topics related to educational inequality, literacy, numeracy and assessment. He also and founded Funda Wande, an influential non-profit organisation.