Richard was born British and after graduating as a teacher came to Tanzania as a volunteer and fell in love with the country. He became a Tanzanian citizen and has taught in secondary schools, teacher colleges and the University of Dar es Salaam. Finally, he decided he was more activist than academic and was founder member of several of Tanzania’s most influential NGOs (for gender and education). After an eight-year period with UNICEF where he worked to develop and prioritize adolescent programmes, he decided he wanted to go back to working directly with adolescents and young people. He left UNICEF and joined force with two young people to set up TAMASHA, a youth participatory development centre based in Arusha Tanzania.
Mabala, a fluent Swahili speaker, is also a writer of children’s books, training manuals in life skills, gender and youth development and satirical columns in newspapers. He has now handed over leadership of TAMASHA to a younger person, and prefers Twitter to newpapers as his tweets reach a much larger audience. He is co-founder and consultant for HerDignity Consult which specialises in gender, youth and education and is trying to concentrate more on writing the many books that whirl round in his head. He is currently writing two novels, one in English and one in Kiswahili.