Rens Twijnstra is Senior Advisor Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) at the Department for Sustainable Economic Development at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and chairs the Results Measurement Working Group at the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development. In 2014, he was awarded a PhD in Sociology of Development by Wageningen University, for research into diaspora entrepreneurship and economic governance in fragile and conflict affected states. He subsequently worked as researcher and consultant on the nexus between enterprise development and socio-economic recovery after conflict. Rens joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2020, where his responsibilities now include providing strategic advice on the formulation of thematic and country-level theories of change, and designing adaptive monitoring, evaluation and learning systems. Rens has lived and worked in Africa for more than 10 years, with previous roles including Research Director in South Sudan and Programme Manager in Rwanda.
