Active Authors
Jigawa surges up the education spending league
Posted 2 February 2010 by Ian Attfield
The Universal Basic Education Intervention Fund (UBE-IF) established in 2005 is a key initiative to try to channel more of the Nigerian oil revenues directly to States to spend on schooling: classrooms, books and teacher training. Early implementation was plagued by fund flow hitches, corruption allegations and poor performance. A report commissioned found that by March 2008, [...]
DFID Director visits Mozambique
Posted 31 January 2010
There was an absolute torrential downpour of rain last week, flooding the roads of Maputo and preventing a number of colleagues arriving at work. It was a bit of a wet welcome then for Beverley Warmington, DFID’s Director of West and Southern Africa and Chris Murgatroyd, the Head of the Directors Office.
I have pictured Beverley [...]
Copenhagen – the view from India
Posted 28 January 2010 by Shantanu Mitra
As this is my first blog since the Copenhagen climate change summit – or the 15th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, to give it its full title – I did not have to think too much about my topic. What does Copenhagen mean for India? India’s media, civil society and [...]
Healing the mental scars in Haiti
Posted 25 January 2010
The statistics coming from Haiti now are like telephone numbers, numbing our sense of scale.
Two million people needing food; up to 800,000 people living in transitional shelter; up to 4000 temporary classrooms needed; some 240,000 pregnant and lactating women requiring nutritional support. This is the measurement of human misery. Yet, underneath this horror, we know [...]
How to get around in Helmand
Posted 20 January 2010
Since I joined the Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team in November I’ve seen some great progress being made here, but I’ve also seen the huge challenges involved in helping the Afghan people govern this country for themselves.
Just before Christmas, Douglas Alexander, the Secretary of State for International Development, visited Helmand and I travelled with him to [...]
Return to Zimbabwe
Posted 15 January 2010 by Dominic Parker
During the last few months, I've been working away at my desk job in London, as well as making a couple of monitoring visits to Zambia & Madagascar. As a keen cyclist, I was interested to meet the Zambikes social business in Lusaka, who've been building high quality bikes in Zambia, including a Zambulance and a Zamcart - bicycle-propelled medical transport and a heavy load [...]
WASH-ing in Bangladesh
Posted 8 January 2010
Many things are taken for granted in the developed world, but I think that clean water must be at the top of the list. One of my little luxuries when I get back to the UK after a few months overseas is putting my toothbrush under a running tap; I have to use bottled water [...]
