Andrew Coulson is a researcher, teacher, trainer and writer.

His book Tanzania: A Political Economy (Oxford University Press 1982, second edition 2013) has become the standard study of Tanzania in the 1970's. In 2018, together with Antony Ellman and Emmanuel Mbiha, he wrote Increasing Production from the Land: A Sourcebook on Agriculture for Teachers and Students in East Africa, published by Mkuki na Nyota in Tanzania and available from the African Book Collective in the UK.

For more than 30 years his career related to local government and community development in the UK. He was a local government officer working on economic development and regeneration in Sheffield, a councillor in Birmingham, and an academic specialising in local government at the Universities of Bradford and Birmingham, England.