Hugh Cole

Director of Policy and Strategy and the Chief Data Officer at the City of Cape Town

Hugh is the Director of Policy and Strategy and the Chief Data Officer in the City of Cape Town. He is a visiting Senior Fellow at the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics. Hugh has built a world class strategic and analytical capability in the centre of a city government serving 5 million people. The team he leads covers policy, strategic planning, infrastructure strategy, economic analysis, research, strategic partnerships and data analytics.

As Chief Data Officer Hugh is leading the implementation of the City Data Strategy and is co-leading work to guide deployment of AI in the city government.

Prior to joining the City of Cape Town, Hugh was Director of Country Programmes at the International Growth Centre in the UK, a partnership between the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford. In this role, Hugh was responsible for teams in 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Hugh held leadership positions in international charities, working in Sudan, Southern Africa and the UK.