Christopher Runyan is the Deputy Assistant Administrator for West Africa in the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Africa. He regularly fills the position of Senior Coordinator for the USAID Bureau for Africa. Mr. Runyan is a career employee of USAID, and serves as the principal advisor to the Assistant Administrator for Africa Monde Muyangwa on a range of priority issues. Among other responsibilities on the senior leadership team, he leads the COVID-19 response across sub-Saharan Africa (since February 2020), is the lead on civil-military cooperation for the bureau, co-leads USAID-wide efforts on information resilience/disinformation, and supports USAID’s role in issues of strategic competition. He also co-leads the USAID global effort to assess and respond to information manipulation.
Mr. Runyan attended the National War College in Washington DC from 2018-2019. From 2016 to 2018 and 2020 to 2021, Mr. Runyan served as acting Deputy Assistant Administrator with responsibility for USAID policy and operations across West Africa and the Sahel region. He was also USAID's Senior Coordinator for the President's Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI).
Mr. Runyan served at the White House on the National Security Council staff as Director for African Affairs responsible for West Africa from 2012-2014. He also served for several years at the Department of State as Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State, and as Director of Foreign Assistance for the U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan. Mr. Runyan joined USAID in 2003 as a Presidential Management Fellow, and has worked in several capacities in USAID's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance; Bureau for Asia and the Near East; and Bureau for Africa.
Mr. Runyan has worked overseas on USAID program management, strategic planning, technical assessments and evaluations in Haiti, Bangladesh, Nepal, Morocco, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, South Africa, Israel/West Bank, South Sudan, Sudan, and served on a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan embedded with NATO forces. Prior to government service, Mr. Runyan worked in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for the Eurasia Foundation to develop civil society and advance economic growth.
He has a Master of Science in National Security Strategy as a distinguished graduate from the National War College in Washington DC, a Master in Public Administration and International Development from the University of Washington, and undergraduate degree in political science, history and Russian from Ohio University. He is also a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Seminar XXI National Security Leadership Program, the U.S. National Security Executive Leadership Seminar, and several senior executive programs.