Sir Edmund Charles Smith Richards (1889–1955) was a British colonial administrator who was Resident Commissioner of Basutoland from 1935 to 1942 and Governor of Nyasaland from 1942 to 1947.
[4] Richards was initially hostile to the idea of establishing joint services to serve the three colonies, but later came round to the idea of extending services such as Civil Aviation and the Court of Appeal from Southern Rhodesia to also cover the northern territories.
In 1945, Richards received a memorandum from the newly formed Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) saying the members disliked sending their boys to the college at Makerere in Uganda "because the standard of education attained is lower than that attained in South African Schools...".
Under this system, children could not enroll if they were too old, and without birth certifications they were subject to arbitrary estimates of whether they were young enough to attend school.
[7] On 15 February 1946, Richards sent proposals to the Colonial Office to change the method of selecting members of the legislative council.