Akhtar Hameed Khan (1914-1999)

Akhtar Hameed Khan was a Pakistani official turned community development activist. After initiating the government’s Comilla rural development experiment during the 1960s he went on to found the Orangi Pilot Project, an innovative NGO working in Karachi. An early example of the ‘social entrepreneur’, Khan’s reflexive style also influenced many alternative development practitioners. His interest in connecting religious philosophy with development ideas was ahead of its time, and his work life history demonstrates the power of ‘sector swapping’, in which he built on experience acquired in one institutional sector (government) to work creatively in another (NGOs).