Christophe Tocco was sworn in as the USAID Mission Director for Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in June 2016. Mr. Christophe Tocco brings more than 20 years of experience in managing and executing international development programs including most recently serving as Deputy Mission Director to USAID/DRC. Mr. Tocco will lead the USAID DRC bilateral mission and the Central Africa Regional Operating Unit, which includes the Central African Regional Program for the Environment, as well as programs that address Countering the Lord’s Resistance Army, and support to the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region. USAID’s mission in DRC also manages Agency programs in the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo.

Mr. Tocco leads the overall implementation of USAID’s five-year Country Development Cooperation Strategy, and plays a key role in policy dialogue with Congolese government institutions and on donor coordination.

As Deputy Mission Director, he assisted the Mission Director in managing the growing responsibilities for the Central Africa Regional Operating Unit (CAROU) which includes the longstanding, six-country Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE), a multi-year Presidential Initiative which has been funded at over $15 million per year since FY 2003, and new responsibilities for USAID programming in the Central African Republic and Republic of Congo as well as programs to address Countering the Lord’s Resistance Army and support the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region.    

Mr. Tocco previously served as USAID Senegal’s Deputy Regional Director, developing and leading the complex USAID Sahel Joint Planning Cell (JPC). The Sahel JPC represents a departure from the “business as usual” divide between humanitarian and development programming, and forges an innovative approach that combines the planning and development of all assistance resources implemented through USAID staff in Niger, Senegal and Ghana’s West Africa Mission into a more structured and systematic approach to build the resilience of the most vulnerable populations. As Deputy Regional Director he managed bilateral development programs and USAID staff in Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Cape Verde, the Gambia and Guinea Bissau.

Mr. Tocco graduated magna cum laude from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1991 where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. Mr. Tocco regularly draws on his experiences living and working in countries such as Morocco, Rwanda, Jordan and Senegal, as well as his fluency speaking French, Spanish, Moroccan and standard Arabic. Mr. Tocco was a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Morocco focused on health. He has worked for USAID as an Education Officer in Morocco and as a Supervisory Program Officer in charge of strategy, project design, monitoring, budgeting and overall program oversight for the USAID Missions in Rwanda and Senegal.

Mr. Tocco is originally from Los Angeles, California.