A few weeks ago, before the current crisis in DR Congo, I found myself seeing Congolese dance of a very different kind.  In the district of Tanganyika, which borders the lake of the same name, I saw a troupe of dancers in a BaTwa (known pejoratively as pygmy) village putting on an impressive display of traditional dress and dance.  But their purpose was not only to entertain: these dancers were sharing messages about HIV and AIDS, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and basic hygiene. As people around the globe marked World AIDS Day last Saturday, it was a reminder of the importance of communicating how to avoid this devastating disease. Last year there were 2.5 million people newly infected with HIV, though worldwide rates are declining. In a place with limited access to TV, radio and the internet, the arts  are often one of the only ways for remote communities to effectively develop their understanding their understanding of how to prevent HIV.

A BaTwa dancer awaits his turn. Another dancer gets into character. Source: Vicky Seymour / DFID

Although it may seem a leap (should that be a sauté?) from dance to road building, I went to see the dancers as part of a visit to the UK aid and World Bank supported programme ProRoutes.

ProRoutes supports the rebuilding of the national priority transport network, rehabilitating over 2,000 kilometres of roads.

Since roads can have significant positive and negative environmental and social impacts, the programme also includes an important element to manage these risks and opportunities.

BaTwa women and children shelter under the eaves of a newly built house in the village. Source: Vicky Seymour/DFID

More specifically, the World Bank’s policy is that, wherever a project takes place in an area where indigenous people live, the project must also have an indigenous people’s development plan.  Here in Tanganyika, there is a significant BaTwa population.  Many BaTwa communities are nomadic or semi-nomadic. This – and prejudice against the BaTwa – has led to a lack of land rights and a lack of agricultural investment.  So we are supporting a range of development activities among BaTwa communities.

The activities that British and World Bank aid is supporting include helping villages to set up committees to identify and advocate for their communities’ needs, securing land rights for BaTwa communities, supporting agricultural investment to provide both food and commercial opportunities, and increasing BaTwa people’s willingness and ability to use health and education services.

The village chief looks over the new fields for which the community has recently been given ownership; A goat pen is being built as one of the community’s development priorities; A BaTwa villager shows us his fishing net and hunting bow and arrow. Source: Vicky Seymour / DFID

In the village of Lukombe, a goat pen is being built as one of the community’s development priorities.  Goats provide milk, food, and a significant source of income.  The community has recently been given ownership of a new field where manioc and other crops are being grown.

The price list at the village health centre. 1$ = 900 congolese francs. Source: Vicky Seymour / DFID

The income from these new agricultural ventures should assist villagers to be able to afford school fees and health care.  Although a lab test costs only US$0.30, this has until now been unaffordable for many BaTwa villagers.

And, it involves helping communities develop their awareness of the risks of HIV and AIDS, STIs and poor hygiene. When you know that every minute a young woman is newly infected with HIV, you realise the importance of prevention. Often this might be done through community meetings or by providing signs or pamphlets in villages.  But in this case, I was lucky enough to see these messages being communicated through the arts – a popular and powerful method when literacy rates are low. In the process, I saw once again that Congolese people really have got the moves.

A typical mobile phone shop in DRC

It's fair to say that British Embassy staff in DRC are slaves to our smartphones. Whether we're pruning our inboxes on our way to meetings or surfing the web outside work, we feel as though we can't live without them.

But anyone living outside DRC's major towns and cities has to live without them. Not having a phone or access to the network is the norm. In many of the DRC's remote "island" towns and villages, even physical communication is nigh on impossible due to lack of roads and infrastructure. For many of these communities, tiny local radio stations are often the only way for people to feel an element of connection with the outside world.

The lack of electricity in remote villages can be partly solved by a solar panel

As I mentioned in my last blog, I recently visited health centres and communities without access to electricity. A knock-on impact of a lack of access to electricity is that there's no way to power mobile phone network masts. Villages that are distant from both the electricity grid and major towns are entirely disconnected from phone communications.

So what happens when a child falls ill and the doctor at the local clinic needs specialist advice from the nearest hospital? Or when a farmer needs to know the price of rice, so he can decide whether to make the day-long trip by bicycle to the market? At the moment, they have to take their chances.

A M-Pesa agent shop

UK aid is increasingly using innovative, locally appropriate technology solutions to tackle some of these thorny development issues. In Kenya, where 80% of the population has access to a mobile phone, British aid has supported the extraordinary success of the M-Pesa mobile banking phenomenon. Now, Kenya is going even further with M-Kopa which allows ordinary people to buy a solar household system for a small down payment, then to pay off the balance by making small pay-as-you-go payments via their mobile phones. Suddenly, a rural farmer in Kenya can have mobile communications, a way to manage their money, and a clean source of light with no running costs, all in one. 

M-KOPA has launched M-KOPA Solar which brings high quality day light solar home systems to rural Kenyans on an affordable pay-as-you-go basis using M-PESA.

What an incredible difference the same kind of advances could make for the rural poor in DRC. Such technology has the power to be truly transformative. It can facilitate knowledge, education and healthcare, and improve access to markets. This knowledge can also give people greater control over their lives - the ability to take rational decisions about where to go to get access to goods and services. It can improve accountability, giving people information about local services, and those responsible for providing them, and giving citizens the ability to call foul on poor performance or corruption.

On 13 November DFID is co-hosting the Open Up! conference together with Omidyar Network and Wired Magazine - where entrepreneurs, government and civil society will come together to galvanise action in the fast-growing field of open government. It will explore how digital tools and new technology can change poor people's lives and accelerate development by helping citizens engage, connect and hold their governments to account. You can follow the conference online - it's going to be live-streamed at www.openup12.org/livestream, or if you're on Twitter, follow #openup12.

A country like DRC has the opportunity to leapfrog generations of technological development, and to make great strides in improving services, strengthening markets, and empowering individuals to hold their governments to account. 

It's creative, exciting technology - but it's not rocket science.

See this infographic from M-Health Africa on mobile market penetration in Africa.

This is a joint post by Vicky and Chris Pycroft, DFID DRC's Head of Office.

Even the provincial ministries do their business without electricity.  Sitting in the waiting room of the Ministry of Health today, I noticed old disconnected wires hanging from walls and ceilings – apart from a single ageing light bulb hanging optimistically over the minister’s desk.

"Black-out hospitals"

DRC's health centres remain very basic and most have no source of power. Once the sun goes down, medical staff have to rely on kerosene lamps and candlelight for emergencies. Source: DFID/Vicky Seymour

I’m here in Kananga, the capital of the province of Kasai Occidental, to help with the design of a major new UK aid programme to improve access to healthcare in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

My role is to figure out how to equip health centres with renewable energy so they don’t become “black-out hospitals”.

Most health centres in DRC have no source of electricity.  Indeed, most people – some 94% of the population – lack electricity.  This mirrors a trend across sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, where 1 billion people are still without access to electricity (see infographic at the end of this blog).

Without power, clinics cannot store blood or medicines, and have to close at night.  This means that some patients cannot be treated or some births attended – or that treatment can only take place sub-optimally by candlelight.

Just one solar panel is enough to light a room for four hours. Six rooms in this health centre now have light when they need it. DFID/Vicky Seymour

We believe that equipping health centres with renewable sources of energy will allow longer opening hours, 24/7 staffing, better

access to blood and medicines, and more treatments and attended births.  This, in turn, should lead to better health outcomes, such as increased life expectancy.

We need to build the evidence to test this hypothesis.  That’s why the UK Department for International Development will undertake a global study to find out what data is out there – or to gather information if we find there are gaps – to tell us what the impact of electricity in clinics and hospitals is on health.

So while I write this blog by the illumination of a guttering flame, I hope that giving birth by candlelight will soon be a thing of the past.

Renewables – very much a part of all of our futures – should give the people of DRC the power to deliver.

by WeberShandwick. Learn about data visualization software.

The London 2012 logo. Source: BBC

Olympic fever is running high in the UK. London 2012 kicks off in late July, and the excitement is palpable, even from an Embassy a whole continent away from home. So it's no wonder that everything we do this year – setting targets for our teams, communicating key messages – is couched in terms that relate to this momentous British occasion. Doing well on something might mean achieving a bronze standard – but outstanding performance means going for gold.

Route Nationale 5 has been closed for many years due to conflict and lack of maintenance

In Kinshasa, there's a degree of coverage of the Olympics in the press. But for the DRC as a whole, going for gold has a much more literal meaning – and one that might make the difference between poverty and a meaningful income. I saw this for myself on my most recent visit to a UK-funded roads project, in the southern province of Katanga.

The road that extends north and south from the town of Kalemie on the shores of Lake Tanganyika is Route Nationale 5. But you wouldn't know it. After decades of weak governance and conflict, the road had turned back into a path, passable only by bicycle or foot. Gradually, with funding from the UK and the World Bank, the road is being reopened again.

The east of DRC is one of the richest areas of the world in terms of natural resources. With forests, oil, diamonds, copper, coltan and cassiterite, to name just a few, DRC has it all.

An artisanal gold mine along the Kalemie-Uvira road

So it was no surprise to come across an artisanal gold mine on the road from Kalemie towards Uvira in South Kivu. I’ve visited mines before, from the world’s largest copper mine in the north of Chile to the silver mines of Potosi in Bolivia to the now-closed coal mines of my birthplace in Yorkshire. But I've never seen earth so rich in precious metals that you can literally pick them up from the ground beneath your feet.

We watched as local villagers picked up a handful of soil, rinsed it on a spade, and filtered it through a tripe-like part of the banana tree that caught the lumps of gold and let the soil wash away. After less than five minutes, a sizeable pile of ore had appeared.

After filtering the soil through a banana plant, the miners rinsed the gold on a spade

Now that the road has been re-opened as far as this mine, the gold can be sold on and the village will enjoy some of the fruits of its labours. But that's not the end of the story.

Of course the mining sector in DRC needs a good set of regulations. But with so much mining being artisanal and happening in isolated locations, those regulations can be very difficult to apply. That means that people might work in unsafe conditions, use child labour, or damage the environment – and that the government does not receive the tax revenues it should.

The miners wrap the gold in paper to transport it to the nearest gold merchants

On the industrial logging side, too, it is crucial that contracts are awarded fairly and transparently, that revenues accrue to the government and is used to the benefit of the poorest in DRC, and that the proceeds of mining are not mis-used to finance conflict. 

To tackle these thorny issues, the DRC is working towards joining the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a coalition of governments, companies and civil society working to make sure natural resources benefit everyone and setting standards for companies to publish what they pay and for governments to disclose what they receive. The UK is providing support to the DRC to improve transparency and revenue in the mining sector. We are also working to encourage adoption of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.

In addtion, we are supporting development in a range of sectors that impact on the mining sector – through our governance, public financial management, anti-corruption, conflict, roads, private sector development and mining programmes.

London 2012 Olympic Gold medal.

So the UK's support will help the DRC to go for gold in the long term.

In the meantime, here's hoping that the DRC can go for gold during London 2012 – and that this is the year for the very first Congolese Olympic medal.

A research stereotype: Einstein at his blackboard. Picture: hetemeel.com

Or do you think about the kind of exciting, innovative initiatives and companies – TED, Google and the DFID-funded "What's Your Bright Idea?" contest spring to mind - that have broken down our preconceptions and shown us how thrilling it can be when creative research is put into extraordinary action?

I've been thinking a lot about the latter after going last month to review a DFID-funded programme in Mozambique.

The Africa Community Access Programme (AFCAP) researches how to use local materials and improved techniques in order to make roads cheaper to build and easier to maintain.

A demonstration site I visited in Mozambique, showing how research can directly impact on the quality of the projects we deliver

I visited some fascinating demonstration sites, where each kilometre tested a different blend of materials and techniques. With much of the country's Route 1 running along the coast, the project was trying out different ways of using sand to construct high-quality roads.

The goal of this kind of research isn't just to build something at a lower cost. It has impacts for real people – including the poorest and most vulnerable. It means that traders can transport goods and access markets more cheaply, and children, mothers and the elderly can access schools and hospitals more easily.

In Mozambique, we saw that a number of small- and medium-sized enterprises had sprung up along the roads. Better, more long-lasting housing is being built. And people are expanding the size of the fields they're cultivating because they can get their goods to market.

While the initial investments in research are relatively small, the returns on those investments can be enormous – with tens of thousands of kilometres of roads being built and maintained differently across Africa, saving millions of dollars, and improving the lives of tens of millions of people.

We calculated that the rate of return to our investment in AFCAP in Mozambique will be 30-60%. That's like investing $100 and getting $130-160 back a year later. You won't find those kinds of rates for savings and investments in the current climate.

DFID is at the cutting edge of this kind of research. We recently won 'Best Technological Breakthrough' at the Climate Week Awards for a project to develop drought-tolerant maize in Africa. You can find out more, and access information about research funded by DFID, at our Research For Development site.

So now when I think about research, I think about the peri peri seller I met on the road to Inhambane who has customers coming past all day long, all year round. Not a wild-haired professor in sight.

Sleeping under an insecticide-treated bednet is the best way to prevent malaria. Picture: Thomas Omondi/DFID

It's moth season in Kinshasa.

Every month here seems to bring different insects. Sometimes it's giant flying beetles. Other times it's swarms of brown paper-like flies. Just now there are moths everywhere - moths as big as my two hands; tiny moths; you name it.

But every season here is mosquito season.

Mosquitoes carry and transmit malaria. Photo: science.howstuffworks.com

Being a wet, equatorial country, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) suffers from malaria across 97% of the country.

The burden of malaria in the DRC is enormous, and alone the country accounts for nearly 10% of all malaria cases in Africa.

One of the first things I learnt about working in development is that everything is interconnected. If we don't tackle malaria, it will be very difficult to improve people's health outcomes in DRC. Not only that, but if people are sick with malaria, they are unable to go to school, or get their goods to market, or seek employment.

In my current job, though, there's another set of links to consider. As DFID DRC's Climate and Environment Advisor, I look at all of our programmes to ensure we've thought through how to handle any climate and environment risks and opportunities.

Right now I'm looking at a new programme to tackle malaria in DRC. 

The programme will provide 10 million long-lasting insecticide-treated bednets to people in the DRC by 2015. This is clearly crucial to helping people here live healthier lives. But what are the climate and environment risks and opportunities?

For a start, we need to consider how and where the bednets are produced, treated with insecticide, and packaged. Is there a way to cut down on the amount of waste from the bednets, or to ship them rather than fly them around the world?

Next, what happens to the bednets when they reach the end of their lifespan? Many bednets have been found being used as fishing nets or for other household uses. But they contain residual pesticides and there may be better uses for them. What's the scope for providing incentives to recycle them, such as providing free or discounted replacement bednets?

Thinking about the interconnectedness of development challenges again, how might we address drainage and waste management to reduce the amounts of standing water that forms breeding grounds for mosquitoes? Another of DFID DRC's programmes is in the water and sanitation sector, so we can think about both of these programmes in tandem to make sure they complement one another.

Finally, a crucial link between climate change and malaria is that, as temperatures and rainfall patterns shift, malaria will move to areas where it wasn't a problem before. We need to be able to plan for a changing future, not just for how malaria affects people today.

In this way, we can think through how to achieve 'win-wins' that deliver both development results and tackle climate and environment challenges in one go.

On World Malaria Day, it's these kinds of win-wins and links we need to keep in mind as we try to count malaria out.

So I'll focus on the mosquitoes, and not the moths, today. Just as soon as I've shooed the last few out of the office!

Ballot papers after the count in the city of Matadi. Source: Radio Okapi

On Friday, the electoral commission announced the tally. 49%, we were told, chose the incumbent president, Joseph Kabila.  32% went for Etienne Tshishekedi and 7.7% for Vital Kamerhe, with the remainder split between the other eight candidates. Turnout was 59%.

To ensure that Congolese citizens, as well as national and international observers, could scrutinise the results, the electoral commission published the breakdown by polling station.  

But with this laudable transparency, some observation missions have started asking significant questions. Some have posed the question of how voter turnout of 99 to 100 per cent could have been recorded in a number of voting centres. Others have asked whether all, or almost all, of the votes could have gone to Kabila in every one of those centres with such a high turnout. How were the counts from almost 2,000 polling stations in Kinshasa lost? And what does this mean for the credibility of the vote?

For the Carter Center, which seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts and enhance freedom and democracy, said that it "does not propose that the final order of candidates is necessarily different than announced by CENI, only that the results process is not credible". You can read their full statement here.

Already, at least four people have died in clashes in Kinshasa. A civil society leader in North Kivu was killed in the early hours of Saturday morning – according to his colleagues, due to his questioning the integrity of the election results. And the leading opposition candidate, Tshishekedi, has declared himself president and called for non-violent protests.

Individuals from across Congo and the international community – including the South African President Jacob Zuma, the UK's Minister for Africa, Henry Bellingham – have called for calm and for irregularities to be challenged through the proper channels. There were two days to lodge appeals. Vital Kamerhe registered an appeal on behalf of the opposition, which the Supreme Court will now consider. Final results are due on 17th December.

The question now is whether the squall will blow itself out, or whether the disparate rumbles will converge into a real storm.

It's true that the announcement of the results of the DRC elections were originally slated for the 6^th December. But the huge challenge of getting materials to the polling stations meant that some opened late, and voting ran over three days rather than one in some parts of the country. Then there was the matter of getting the ballot boxes and records of events in each polling station back to the electoral commission so the votes from 63,000 stations could be compiled.

So it's not surprising that things have taken a little while. In the meantime, the electoral commission has gradually released results.

With 89% of the provisional results in, Kabila, the incumbent president, has 48% of the vote. His nearest rival, Etienne Tshisekedi, has 34%. Kabila has 2.4 million votes more than Tshisekedi, with around 1.7 million votes yet to be counted.

We should hear the final provisional tally some time today.

So what happens next?

Crucially, the results that have been announced so far have not been broken down polling station by polling station. Each polling station posted its vote count outside as soon as counting was over – scrutinised by political party and international observers. They also sent a copy of the count to the station where results were to be compiled, dispatched a second to the headquarters of the electoral commission, lodged another with the Supreme Court, and sent a fourth to their provincial election body. Only when the electoral commission releases the results by polling station will the public be able to verify whether the results they saw counted on the day are the same as the compiled results.

And that's what really matters – that ordinary Congolese have faith in the results.

So we continue to wait, and soon we'll see.

One of the schools used as a voting centre. Source: Phoebe White/DFID

As I reported in my last blog, I spent Monday 28^th November 2011 as an international observer of the elections in the DRC.

The morning – covered in my previous blog post – revealed a degree of disorganisation and confusion, yet an overriding desire among ordinary people to stick it out and cast their vote.

By the afternoon, the queues had gone down and it looked as though people had succeeded.

But there were still problems to come. We saw blank ballot papers outside the polling stations – which, if there were no other checks and balances, could pose the risk of ballot boxes being stuffed. People were angry at what they felt was an attempt to defraud them. And there were a variety of other problems reported across the country.

Conspiracy theories were flying around – such as the one about the pens handed out by officials being filled with disappearing ink so that votes could be revised. Things heated up, as blank ballot papers were torn and burnt and an angry crowd took to the streets.

People look for their names on the voter lists to find out where to cast their votes. Source: Phoebe White/DFID

Yet what we saw in the counting of the votes told us that at this polling station, at least, the problems couldn't derail the overall process.

We watched officials count the votes in a classroom in the school that was used as a voting centre. Sitting on school benches, a room full of party witnesses from a variety of political stripes ensured that the count was transparent, that null votes really were null votes, and that the total of the votes for each candidate  matched up to the number of people who had voted and the number of ballot papers in the room. 

So now we await the official reports of the observers, and of course the outcome of the election itself, due on December 6^th.  With no opinion or exit polls before or after the voting, it's almost impossible to know what the results will be. Those analysts who have tried believe it could be a close run thing.

And perhaps more importantly still, we await the reaction to the results. The irregularities and violence have already been said by some in the opposition to call the elections into question. Four presidential candidates asked for the elections to be annulled, though importantly one of them has now retracted his request and has called for calm.

For me, it's back to business as usual until we hear more. After one of the most fascinating days of my life as an observer, and with so many questions about what happens next, it's time to re-focus on my usual work – which continues regardless of who becomes president in the coming days.

I set off at 4:45 this morning - bleary-eyed but as tightly wound with excitement and anticipation as the city of Kinshasa has been throughout the final weekend of the election campaign - to monitor polling in the quartier of Bandal.

By 8am, I had seen one bureau de vote, or polling station, in action. But two-thirds of the 35 polling stations in the voting centre I visited were still closed. The voter lists had not yet turned up.

Some of the British Embassy election monitoring team waiting to set off at 5am for the opening of the polling stations. Picture: Vicky Seymour/DFID

As I mentioned in my last blog, the election has been an immense logistical challenge. At this voting centre, all the materials - ballot boxes and seals, ballot papers, indelible ink to show who has cast their vote, voting booths - had arrived. But the voter lists weren't there, so the polls could not begin.

People were frustrated and - when the torrential rain began at around 10 am - a little angry. But most of all, they just wanted to make their voice heard in only the second democratic election in over 40 years. When they saw me, with my official badge and my Embassy t-shirt, they clearly hoped my mandate went beyond observing and that I had some power to get the lists in place so they could exercise their constitutional rights.

It's official: my international observer pass. Picture: Vicky Seymour/DFID

Finally, at around 8:30 am, the lists arrived. The orderly queues began to jostle for position, as the electoral commission staff showed the empty ballot boxes to the waiting voters before sealing them in front of a room of witnesses. Around 20 representatives of the various political parties, as well as two international observers, crowded the small classroom to bear witness to the legitimacy of the process.

I saw a number of elderly ladies, unable to read or write, but keen to cast their vote. They were told, with the help of educational pictures on the walls, that any mark would do next to the picture of the candidate they wanted to see become the next president.

The list for the deputes, or MPs, was a bit more challenging - for the elderly ladies and for everyone else. The size of a broadsheet newspaper, if you hadn't noted down in advance the number of the candidate you were looking for, you could be spending a large part of the morning with the ballot paper. Some people certainly did take a good 10 or 15 minutes to make their choice, before battling to squeeze the paper into the small slot of the ballot box.

At 8am, many people were still queuing patiently for their chance to vote. Picture: Vicky Seymour/DFID

While each person's vote was expected to take between three and five minutes from being checked off the voter list to having their left thumb marked with indelible ink, in the two polling stations I sat in it took between 13 and 14 minutes. With 350 voters attending each polling station, the officials would have to speed the process up over the day to ensure everyone's voice was heard. I’m taking a short breather now to nap before I head back out for the closing of the polls and the counting of the votes.

After a late start for so many polling stations, we'll be looking to make sure they all stay open for the required 11 hours. With the count taking place right after each station closes, it could be a long night.

But if even a little of the Kinois fervour rubs off on me, I'll last the course through a day and night in which a fair amount of disorganisation and an awful lot of rain have done little to dampen the election spirit.