My father-in-law, Nick Wallis, who has died aged 85, was one of the final cohort of colonial civil servants. He saw his most important role as helping Kenya towards a successful independence.

Born in Oxford, Nick was the son of Claude Wallis, who also worked for the colonial service, and his wife, Winifred (nee Shawyer), an artist.

After a childhood partially spent in wartime Sudan and Kenya, in 1946 Nick was sent to Bryanston school in Dorset. He studied agriculture at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he rowed for the university in the 1953 and 1954 Boat Races. He then completed an MSc at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad.

He met Joy Wilcocks, a primary school teacher on secondment from Kent, on the island, and they married in 1955. The following year, they moved to Kenya, for Nick to take up a civil service post as agricultural officer. His first job was at the Coffee Research Station, Jacaranda, where he contributed to the development of the Kenyan coffee industry. Nick was a keen mountaineer and photographer, and the family enjoyed safaris on the game parks and trips to Mounts Kenya and Kilimanjaro.

After independence in 1963 Nick was retained at the invitation of President Jomo Kenyatta. His final roles for the Kenyan government were assistant director of agriculture and chief coffee officer.

In 1971 the family returned to the UK, living in Camberley, Surrey, while Nick took up a post with the International Coffee Organisation as chief area officer, western hemisphere.

He joined the World Bank in 1974, moving to Bethesda, Maryland, and served from 1977 to 1983 as the deputy division chief, where he used his wide experience in supervising loans for projects in South America. He then became division chief for agriculture and rural development, the education and training wing of the World Bank, finally working on economic development and training projects from China to Brazil.

In 1992 Nick and Joy retired to Docklow, Herefordshire, engaging enthusiastically with the local community in between travelling and entertaining their family and friends. Nick visited Antarctica in 2011 to complete his set of continents.

During this period he continued his work on tropical agriculture, publishing a World Bank monograph in 1997 and acting as an adviser to an increasing number of researchers.

Joy died in 2014, and in 2015 Nick moved to Lincoln. There he became a member of the St Nicholas with St John church community in Newport. His adventures included a South African safari and tall ships sailing in Thailand.

Nick is survived by his children, Jill, Philip, Janet, Felicity and Thomas, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.