Nine celebrities arrived in Tanzania this weekend to climb Kilimanjaro for Comic Relief and I was lucky enough to be part of the welcome party! As well as being extremely excited to meet the idols of my teenage years (Gary …
One of the events associated with World AIDS Day each year is the launch of the UNAIDS report on monitoring the global epidemic. In this report UNAIDS use all the available data to summarise trends in HIV prevalence throughout the …
The 'short rains' have started and are here in force. As my first time living somewhere tropical, they are fascinating to me. Not the grey drizzle you get in the UK, but 'proper rain', 'really-coming-down-hard' rain, 'if-you-go-out-in-it-for-two-minutes-you-are-soaked-through' rain. This is …
Have you sent anyone a Happy African Statistics Day card yet? No thought not…but the 18th of November has been celebrated as "African Statistics Day" across the continent since the nineties. Its purpose is to increase public awareness about the …
I promised to talk more about the programme of support to statistics that I am working on at the moment. At the moment I am working with the Government, the World Bank and other Development Partners (DPs) to develop our …
I have just got in after a training course into the weird and wonderful ways and workings of the ‘Development Partnership Group' (DPG). The purpose of the DPG, and its many underlying sector and cluster working groups, is to manage the …
One of the things I miss about living in London is cycling to work. So once I realised that it would only take around 20 minutes to cycle to my new office in Dar Es Salaam, I was keen to …
In Tanzania, as in many African countries, there is evidence of the informal economy wherever you look. As you walk through the streets of Dar Es Salaam, there are small stalls everywhere, selling fruit and veg, plants, mobile phone sim …
Recently, I sat down to dinner with Hilary Armstrong MP, who was in Tanzania to undertake some voluntary work in a leading Tanzanian non-governmental organisation working in education. She was in the country to celebrate the 50th anniversary of VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) – …
Throughout the six years I have worked in DFID I have always wanted to work in one of our offices based in a developing country. Living overseas, close to the ‘front line’ of delivering aid has to be the top …
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