Jigawa students need better facilities

Continuing my ‘it ain’t so bad in Naija’ theme, it's pleasing to see a corner being turned in many States and money reaching where it needs to. Dr. Modibbo, Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), reported that the backlog of funds had dropped from 70 to 30 billion Naira within 12 months: the clearing of a back log of over US$ 250 million. The ‘carrot and stick’ approach includes Good Performance Awards, while naming and shaming States’ that can’t seem to spend money on schools.

Jigawa Commissioner of Education Prof. Ruqqaya Rufai

Jigawa, a poor rural Northern State has completely turned around its dismal UBE record. Governor Lamido and the resolute Commissioner of Education, Prof. (Mrs) Ruqqaya Rufai, have cleared the funding backlog. Projects are proceeding smoothly and Jigawa surged from relegation zone material to top of the league performer by the end of 2009. Contracts valued at N2.6 Billion (£10 million) were awarded for classroom construction and furniture at 401 schools: much-needed space for thousands of students. Dropping in last June the Commissioner was too busy to talk to a DFID staff member like me: she was dealing with a tsunami wave of contractors in her office!

Getting the money to flow is especially important in Jigawa, to tackle some of the worst indicators in the country. A 2006 survey found that only 18 per cent of females and 35 per cent of males in the age group 15-19 had completed primary school. Hopefully this will go somewhere to alleviate the poverty and hardship that was being described to me so starkly at the Talakawa Summit by Jigawa’s ordinary citizens.

Beverley Warmington and Keith Mackiggan after torrential downpour

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 and Keith Mackiggan before the start of the office meeting. Keith looks like he is about to enter a wet tee-shirt competition!

Beverley and Chris’s visit was for discussions on DFID’s programme and in particular to look at the support DFID gives directly to the budget of Mozambique. General Budget Support is considered to be an effective method of providing development aid, however it requires robust mechanisms to ensure sound public financial management and, in Mozambique’s case, is linked closely to national efforts to strengthen systems of government and the democratic process.

Chris Murgatroyd in wet shirt

Also caught in the torrential downpour was Chris Murgatroyd, who would come a close second in the wet shirt competition! I know Chris is used to wet conditions as we used to work together in the DFID Bangladesh office and are both no strangers to torrential rain and flooding. Chris has the most fantastic voice – and next time he visits I will have to persuade him to sing for the office in order to open the meeting.

Since then the pace has been unrelenting. The College of Education at Oro is being transformed, with a reformed curriculum for teachers like Mrs Adenekan above who want to teach and teach well. The mass of students looking for an easy diploma are gone. 

Last summer I visited Commisioner Bolaji as the School Inspectorate was evolving into a school friendly Quality Assurance Agency. Staff were reapplying for jobs and only the 'fittest' would survive. A similar whirlwind was blowing through the system and an e-payment system had helped to expose fraud and 'ghost' workers on the payroll. New education legislation is being introduced to clarify roles and responsibilities.

The Kwara State Schools’ Improvement Teams (Lagos’s team was featured in a recent post) are now moving to improve the quality of learning in the core subjects and Commissioner Bolaji has set high standards for improved exam results and is laying on extra classes.  His advice to parents on home study remains old fashioned but wise: ‘If the room your child will study in has a TV, remove the cord. For those with handsets, take it away from them till the examination is over…"

Alberto Pasini and Dr Gertrudes at the CCM meeting

Alberto Pasini, who works for the Global Fund and is responsible for the portfolio of grants the Global Fund provides to Mozambique arrived from Geneva on Monday and join the planning meeting of the Country Coordination Mechanism (mentioned in my last blog). Alberto, who also covers Angola, was an extremely useful source of information on Global Fund procedures, and helped increase the CCM members understanding of some of the Fund’s requirements.

Alberto was able to discuss the Mozambique’s current and future grants with Dr Gertrudes Machatine, the Ministry of Health Director of Planning and Cooperation, who is also a member of the CCM. I captured the two of them in conversation outside the meeting room.

Alberto Pasini and Narciso Mato relax after the CCM meeting

The CCM meeting was chaired by Prof. Narciso Matos (who I have mentioned previously), and the dinner was an excellent opportunity for Narciso and Alberto to get to know one another. Given the close working relationship between the Global Fund and the Country Coordination Mechanism, this was time well spent.  Alberto and Narciso are pictured here looking relaxed before the dinner.

The CCM meeting concluded this morning, but this is really the starting point for another week of work for the Global Fund team here in Maputo. I will introduce Nathalie Zorzi, another member of the team shortly as we met to discuss the forthcoming annual evaluation of the health sector.

Mrs Adenekan, Africa Teacher of Year (Credit: Dimeji Kayode-Adedeji)

However I want to focus on the positive.  It was heart warming to hear about Mrs Adenekan from Ogun State selected as ‘Africa Primary Teacher of the Year’. A teacher since 1978, she recently completed upgrade teaching which included a focus on more practical teaching skills through the ‘Teachers Education in Sub-Saharan Africa' (TESSA) programme at the National Teacher’s Institute. Teaching in public schools is often maligned in Nigeria, but this was always her ambition and now one of her own children is also a teacher. I hope Mrs Adenekan’s trip to the UK and visit to the Queen will be rewarding.  She will be flying high, like the Super Eagles progress in the Africa cup of Nations (well, until last night at least)!

Katie Bigmore of DFID (at the front) and Lisa Nelson of CDC Mozambique

There were a number of partners present in the meeting, and I have attached a pictured Katie Bigmore, my colleague in DFID talking to Dr. Lisa Nelson, who is the director of the United States Centre for Disease Control here in Mozambique which manages PEPFAR funding, which is the President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief.

The Minister highlighted a number of challenges Mozambique faces trying to mould the Global Fund mechanisms, which are best suited to project type financing, to the SWAp approach in Mozambique, which has been set up to organise donor funding so that it helps build a strong national system. It should be possible to effectively tackle the three diseases at the same time as helping to build strong health systems which are better able to meet all the essential health needs of the population of Mozambique. Unfortunately funding disbursed in 2009 was less than a third of that anticipated, and the next couple of weeks will require some intensive work and planning if we are to overcome this lack of predictability in funding, which is essential for effective functioning of the Ministry of Health.  

I will post a blog shortly with an update on whether we are making progress, as we also had a major meeting of the Country Coordination Mechanism (CCM) of the Global Fund this week. The meeting, which takes place in central Maputo over the course of a day and a half, is an opportunity for members of the Government and civil society to consider together with GFATM and development partners what needs to be done. 

As I said at the beginning, it has been a busy week as in addition to the Global Fund visit, there was also a series of meetings to plan for the annual evaluation of the health sector, which I have mentioned previously. And I also had a meeting with the Permanent Secretary (Dr. Tomo) and directors of the Ministry to discuss key issues facing the sector, as well as DFID having a visit from the Director for Africa, Beverley Warmington, but more on this later.

One clear strand of opinion – especially prevalent among environmental campaigners and India’s strong NGO community – is that Copenhagen was a disaster for the world’s and India’s poor, who are most vulnerable to climate change. A typical reaction is that of the Centre for Science and Environment, one of India’s leading environmental thinktanks.

At the same time, the Indian government has come under fire from those who believe it went too far in announcing, on the eve of Copenhagen, a voluntary target to reduce India’s "emissions intensity" – the amount of CO2 emitted per dollar of economic output – by 20-25% below 2005 levels by 2020. According to these critics, India should have made no such commitments given its poverty levels, its very low carbon emissions per capita and the historical responsibility of the developed countries, who have failed to meet their own emission reduction targets.

Other domestic voices – admittedly a minority – have praised the Indian government for showing a willingness to be part of the solution even though India bears no historical responsibility, thus playing a constructive role in negotiations.

By far the most interesting and encouraging sign for me, however, is that India is not standing still waiting to see what emerges from the Copenhagen Accord. In the absence of a strong and binding international agreement, action on climate change will have to be driven by domestic benefits – and there’s every sign of this happening in India. Earlier this week the Minister for Environment (who featured in my last blog) gave a strong message to this effect.

Two impressive initiatives launched shortly before Copenhagen are the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission which aims to expand India’s solar power generation from its currently negligible level to 20,000 MW by 2022; and a new National Biomass Cookstove Initiative. The latter is truly exciting in that it promises to reduce carbon emissions whilst also tackling indoor air pollution – rated by the WHO as the third greatest risk to health in India.

There are many more examples of action, many of them from the “bottom-up” – from the private sector or local governments. It’s fertile ground for DFID cooperation, since we aim to put development and poverty reduction at the heart of our work on climate change. Improving the health of the poor, for example, is one of the main objectives of DFID overall in India. Last Wednesday I was chatting with Sabina Barnes, one of DFID’s team of Health Advisers here, who helped organise a conference a few months back on climate change and health. The conversation turned to the new cookstove initiative and how this could contribute to better health, particularly in rural areas. Sabina immediately saw the links, and we agreed to stay in touch on this issue.

The annual march to Parliament of the National Confederation of Dalit Organisations

Finally, a word about the photograph. I took this at the annual march to Parliament of the National Confederation of Dalit Organisations, representing India’s former “Untouchables” and other socially-excluded people. It was just before Copenhagen – and for the first time ever, “climate justice” featured as one of their key demands. I wondered whether this was a sign of things to come, and if the voice of the poor themselves will start to be heard in the debate now hotting up.

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 we have been here before. And we must continue to learn from previous disasters.

Last night, I came across an excellent report from the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action  (ALNAP). Well-researched, it is a catalogue of what has gone wrong in previous mega-quakes. It also provides some instant answers to topical issues – such as the two currently chasing each other through newspaper columns: ‘How many people have died? And how many were injured?’. The answer: there is no rule of thumb – but getting it wrong may mean that you have a lot of under-employed field hospitals on your hands, as happened after the Indian Ocean tsunami.

And then there are the dead. Contrary to popular belief, dead bodies are rarely infectious; but they do pose a more insidious threat. In Aceh, I looked out over the silent, red-earth field that was the final resting place for an estimated 80,000. It had just been covered; and the smell of death was mixed with the smell of freshly-turned soil. In what remained of the city, the collective grief was like an endless, silent scream. On this, the ALNAP report is unequivocal: ‘In dealing with the dead, agencies should give priority to the needs of the living…. the real disease posed by dead bodies is not epidemic disease but the risk of mental illness caused by the lack of closure over the missing.’

I don’t underestimate the size of the challenge. I see that the Haitian government estimates 112,250 dead; how can you deal with this number of bodies? It is inevitable that many have already been consigned to mass graves. What will be important now is the support that the world can give to ease the mental anguish of the survivors.

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The Minister, a surgeon, is an extremely punctual person, and I had to run up the stairs to the eighth floor to ensure I arrived in good time for the 8am appointment, which in this heat was not sensible!

I congratulated the Minister on his appointment for a second mandate. Minister Garrido has clearly set out his vision for health in Mozambique and aims to take forward a number of policy issues that have been discussed over the past couple of years.

Minister Garrido with Dr Celia Goncalves in the Ministers meeting room

I have attached a picture of Minister Garrido with Dr Celia Goncalves, who is currently leading the planning of the annual review of the health sector, which I mentioned in a blog post earlier this week. Together, we briefly discussed planned changes to the annual review which we hope will help strengthen the Ministry's own monitoring and evaluation systems.

Our discussion included mention of the Commonwealth Heads of Government held in Port of Spain where Members of the Commonwealth said they were committed to achieving universal coverage of health services, which would be free at the point of use, particularly for the poorest women and children.

Mozambique already has free services for Mothers and Children under 5, and spoke about this policy at the UN High Level Event on the Millennium Development Goals, in a  meeting chaired by Sarah Brown. The ongoing need to ensure that the cost of health services should not be a barrier to any Mozambican accessing health care will be an important area for discussion over the coming months.

Marco Gerritsen will take over from me as the focal partner. Marco is already well connected in Mozambique, having worked here in the Ministry of Health a number of years ago and he is well remembered by many people within the Ministry. Marco also brings to Mozambique huge relevant experience for the task in hand, having worked in Zambia on their Sector Wide Approach (SWAp) and more recently based in the Netherlands as a health and HIV/AIDS adviser, developing a tool for evaluating health sector performance.

From left to right: Marco Gerritsen, Jonas and Etelvina

Here is a picture of Marco, at last week’s meeting of the Monitoring and Evaluation working group. Next to him is Jonas Chambule of Irish Aid, and beyond Jonas is Etelvina Mahanjane, the coordinator of the health partners group who I blogged about earlier this week.

I first met Marco in Brussels, when I was working for the European Commission in the Directorate General for Development. Marco was then representing the Netherlands in the European Union Member State meetings on health. So, we have previously shared a Belgian beer following an intensive day of discussion on the European Programme and the European Strategy for Action on the Health Workforce.

DFID will continue to be the vice-focal partner, which will help to ensure that the institutional knowledge and relationships built up over the last couple of years are used to help support the Netherlands in the focal partner role.