As we approach World AIDS Day 2012, on the 1st of December, I have paused to reflect on some of the country visits that I have made this year, which have highlighted the on-going impact of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) on ordinary people's lives. My visit to Malawi (here, [...]

After visiting Siavonga District (mentioned in my last post), we travelled to Monze District and then deep in to the bush to visit a remote health post at Kayola. The first leg of the journey was down 20 kilometres of rough, dusty, rock-strewn dirt track to reach Nampeyo rural health centre (a health promotion poster [...]

Given current events in eastern DRC it seems strange to be writing about anything else. M23’s capture of Goma and ongoing push to the South has been widely covered in the international press (Reuters’ coverage has been particularly good). I left Bukavu on Wednesday, after M23 announced it was their next target and students protested [...]

I travelled miles down bumpy dirt tracks in rural Zambia last week in order to meet four Community Health Assistants (CHAs), who are recent graduates from a batch of over 300 health workers trained by the Government of the Republic of Zambia, with funding from DFID through the Clinton Health Access Initiative. This cadre of [...]

It's a bit unnerving to be decanted from a helicopter into the middle of a field, surrounded by towering hills in the far reaches of North Kivu on the edge of an area active with Mayi-Mayi fighters. But there we were - seven representatives of various development and United Nations agencies, watching the Lithuanian-crewed helicopter disappearing [...]

I attended the local launch of the UNESCO Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report (GMR) 2012 on a sultry Friday morning at Tanzania's National Museum. This year the thematic focus was on 'Youth and Skills: Putting Education to Work'. It included a well crafted discourse on the importance of giving all young people access [...]

Tourism was not the first thing I expected to do while living in Kabul, but I recently discovered that there are some impressive sights to visit, including the treasures at the National Museum of Afghanistan. The museum was built in 1922 during the reign of King Amanullah Khan and in its heyday housed one of the [...]

I'm a keen cricket fan, so recently I travelled to Colombo, Sri Lanka to cheer on Afghanistan in the World 2020 Cup competition. I was able to wear my own Afghan cricket shirt as a few months ago the Afghan Cricket Board contacted the British Embassy, and wanted to know if people would like to buy [...]

I'm Su Kahumbu Stephanou, a passionate Kenyan farmer and social entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Green Dreams Ltd and Green Dreams Tech Ltd, focused on creating solutions for smallholder farmers in Africa to give them sustainable productivity and incomes. I am especially committed to educating, encouraging and enabling young people to engage in agriculture and build [...]

Originally, the acute frustration which led me to invent the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989 was all about documents. The frustration was that all kinds of documents were sitting in disks on machines. Even at a very advanced place like the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), a networked world in which most computers [...]