Archive for 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 [...]
Another leader making waves, this time of education reform, is the Hon. Commissioner of Education in Kwara State, Mr Bolaji Abdulahi. DFID education programmes have been working in Kwara since 2007 and we have constantly struggled to keep up with his whirlwind pace of reforms, aimed at getting the school system back on track. Bolaji speaks [...]
It ended up being a relatively late night on Tuesday, due to a working dinner which came at the end of a full day of discussions on the Global Fund. I say relatively late, as my working day normally begins when I open the DFID office at 7.15, so anything that extends the day beyond [...]
Regular readers might get the impression that there is only doom and gloom to emerge from Nigeria. Certainly the current violence in Jos with 100’s dead is deeply saddening. An earlier post after a visit I made to Jos between late 2008 and recent bouts of killing highlighted the underlying tensions of poverty and natural resource [...]
It's been a busy week! The big events kicked off in the Minister of Health’s meeting room on the 8th floor of the Ministry yesterday afternoon in a meeting called by Minister Paulo Ivo Garrido to discuss this week's visit of the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM). It was my second [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Last Friday morning I had just emerged from a meeting with Minister Paulo Ivo Garrido, who I have posted a blog about previously. Minister Garrido was confirmed as the Minister for Health of Mozambique for a second term following the inauguration of President Guebuza on the 14th of January. The Minister, a surgeon, is an extremely [...]
In March this year, it will be two years since DFID took on the focal partner role for health in Mozambique, and it will be time for the UK to hand over the baton to the Netherlands. The handover process normally happens at the end of the big annual policy discussion with the Minister of [...]
Each year the performance of the health sector in Mozambique is measured through a process known as the annual joint evaluation. I have provided some detail on this process in a previous blog, as well as giving a snap shot of some of the field visits involved. However, this is a quick post to acknowledge [...]
