During my recent visit to DRC, I witnessed life in the huge, vibrant but troubled capital city, Kinshasa.

One street in the Kimbanseke commune in Kinshasa
Picture: DFID DRC

In the tree-lined streets of Gombe, the diplomatic quarter on the banks of the Congo River, I discussed questions of governance, the mining sector, the business environment and donor coordination with the Prime Minister. Then, I travelled to Kimbanseke, the poorest commune of Kinshasa, a sprawling settlement of slum dwellings off the airport road. There, I visited a centre for girls living on the street supported by War Child UK *. I toured the centre and met staff. The 30 or so girls who live at the centre were engaged in a lively maths class; for many of them it is the first chance they have had to access any form of education. Finally, I had the opportunity to sit with eight of the girls and talk to them about their lives, experiences and the support that the centre offers.

Claudine's story is typical: her mother died when she was 9 years old and her father married another woman. The family was poor and there was often not enough food. Claudine was accused of witchcraft and fled her home. She started to beg on the street. After a few days, she met an older girl, a yaya (big sister in Lingala, a Congolese language), who helped her to 'look for money' (initiated her into prostitution). Claudine earned between 500-1,000 Congolese Francs (US$ 0.6 - $1.2) per client and was obliged to give the money she earned to the yaya in return for food and protection. Claudine lived like this for 3 years. She was raped several times, including by soldiers based at the nearby camp. The last time she was raped, she became pregnant and fell very ill. The yaya brought her to the day centre for street children based in Matete to get medical treatment. Claudine now visits the centre most days. She has just started literacy lessons and after the birth of her baby, she hopes to start vocational training as a beautician. She dreams of being one of the country's top beauticians and, one day, she says that she wants to use some of the money she makes to help other street girls.

War Child's center for girls living in the street in Kinshasa.
Pictures: DFID DRC / War Child

According to aggregated development statistics, Kinshasa province performs well relative to other provinces of DRC and few international aid agencies support programmes there. Yet, scratch below the surface and a very different picture emerges. Everyday life is especially difficult for women and girls in Tshangu. In this situation, many women - especially adolescent girls - resort to risky livelihood strategies such as transactional sex and commercial sex work - sometimes encouraged by their own families; sometimes after fleeing from home. Locally-collected data** reveals high and increasing numbers of girls living and working on the streets and a widespread phenomenon of "filles-mères" (girl-mothers) in the district. These vulnerable girls and young women are often excluded from school, unable to access healthcare and exposed to HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and both sexual and physical violence. There are very few services targeted at them, apart from a few day centres and vocational training centres run by local or international NGOs.

War Child has set up a night ambulance gives support to the girls living in the street of the Tshangu district in Kinshasa
Picture: War Child

The project’s main activities are providing street children with support including a mobile 'night-ambulance' offering immediate access to medical and psychosocial support, a 24-hour drop-in centre, counselling, medical support and referral. Where possible, girls are reunified with their families or other long-term solutions are sought. Awareness-raising campaigns to promote awareness of children's rights are being undertaken to tackle negative community attitudes towards street girls, so as to address stigmatisation and other factors preventing family reintegration, such as peer influence, behavioural difficulties, lack of income, lack of education and of employment opportunities. My experience in Kinshasa reflects some of the challenges facing both our programme and staff in DRC. On the one hand, we need to engage politically at the highest level if we are to support real change for the people of DRC. While on the other we need to have enough knowledge and understanding of how people live, and in particular, the poorest and most vulnerable, to be able to listen to their views, and respond appropriately. The Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening, recently announced a package of new measures to support women and girls living in poverty and has repeated her determination to step-up the UK government’s implication in front of the Commons. At the same moment, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Lynne Featherstone, attended the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York to make sure the UK plays a leading role in protecting women and girls rights.

DFID DRC is exploring ways of funding innovative work, specifically in relation to catalysing better results for women and girls. The challenge then, is how to use the lessons learned from this work to influence the policy and practice of key partners, as well as tackling damaging social norms and practices that leave Claudine, and thousands like her, with no other option but to live on the streets of Kinshasa.

Visit to the War Child center in Kimbanseke, Kinshasa
Picture: DFID DRC

President Kabila, with UNSG Ban Ki Moon looking on. Photo: AP

Leaders from 11 countries met yesterday (Sunday 24th Feb) in Addis Ababa and signed a Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework agreement intended to bring peace to the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. After nearly a year of renewed fighting in eastern DRC between rebel groups and the Congolese Army, the number of internally displaced people increased by one million to 2.7 million. This comes after months of negotiations and was welcomed by the UK Government in a statement  by the Foreign Office Minister, Mark Simmonds.

Meanwhile, last week another peace agreement was signed, at a much more local level, reminding us that conflict in the DRC is not just about the east of the country. Last Monday, following a two year peace process, members of four communities met in Equateur province to sign non-agression accords.

The inyelle rebellion

Peace Rally in Gemena, DRC

In 2009, long-standing socio-economic and political tensions between two tribal groups, exacerbated by local tensions over access to fishing ponds, exploded into a conflict that caused 200,000 people to flee their homes. The initial burst of conflict rapidly drew in local politicians and businessmen and the dispute was rapidly transformed into an armed rebellion that became a platform for others to vent political grievances, including troops loyal to Mobutu living in neighbouring Republic of Congo. The rebellion and the impact on thousands of families demonstrates how fragile peace in the DRC really is and how important it is for us to understand the local political economy and conflict drivers. More than that, it illustrates the potential for instability way beyond the headlines of eastern DRC. 

A local peace accord

25 car convey into town

Last week,  I accompanied the UN Secretary General's Deputy Special Representative, the national Minister of Interior and the diplomatic corps to Gemena in northern Equateur to witness the signing of the peace accords between these communities. After two years of reconciliation work and repatriation efforts, the ceremony brought together the four communities. Despite my heart dropping as I was bundled into one of a 25 car convoy from the aiport to the ceremony (maybe I should just get over my dislike of the idea of these jamborees), it was a fascinating day and in fact an interesting example of senior political engagement in a province that is often ignored by national and international press.

Male community leaders smoke together

The ceremony itself  - arranged by the UN peacekeeping force, MONUSCO and the national government, was an interesting insight into local conflict resolution. It was also surreal at times, particularly the smoking ceremony, where the men from each of the four communities - having handed over their weapons to the interior minister - chain-smoked together as a sign of their new-found solidarity and brotherhood. More disturbingly, this was followed by a ceremony designed to demonstrate the invincibility of the tribes represented, that included young men from the four communities jostling in line to be whipped.This local peace process was a practical illustration of the importance of action on local conflict in the DRC, the subject of Séverine Autesserre's book "The Trouble with the Congo".

It struck me, watching the violent display of strength and personal resilience in Equateur last week, how different this ceremony would have been from the pomp and ceremony of the events in Ethiopia, but also how important it is that we focus on the local causes of conflict and ensure that our diplomatic and development interventions go beyond the east.

Justine Greening, DFID's Secretary of State's speech at the Open Up conference in November 2012, set the tone: "We need to be really honest with ourselves and others about why it didn't work. And we need to share those results, not hide them away.”

The aspiration for both funding agencies and implementers to be more open about learning from failure is mirrored in the mainstream media. The Guardian recently carried a story about How to talk about failure  and the need for more humility: "We are working in some of the most challenging environments on earth – it's our mission to go where others have failed to make a difference and help create lasting change. By the very definition of our calling, we should expect that we will fail, and fail often. If our work were easy, someone else would have solved the problems of poverty, pollution, corruption and the like long ago”.

Last week, the New York Times set out how "success stories are rarely the whole story … projects frequently go off course, and it’s not unusual for them to fail outright. What is unusual is for researchers to openly discuss their failures." And there are many others: a very frank TED talk on the implications of admitting failure; an entire edition of the Harvard Business Review dedicated to on failure full of articles and follow-up blogs on the importance of failure. The list goes on...

There are also a growing number of proactive initiatives to encourage this debate. A few of my favourites are:

• The World Bank Institute's Fail Fairs;
• The annual day for failure;
• Engineers without Borders' Failure Report;
• admitting failure.com

Global international institutions are joining in: The World Bank President, Jim Kim’s latest blog, Big idea 2013 - learning fast from failure, sets out plans for hubs to collect and distribute case studies of both success and failure. The IFC's smart lessons initiative, The Asian Development Bank, the Head of the UK Civil Service, Sir Bob Kerslake all echo the sentiment. Is there a chance that failure is going global?

What about in DFID? It is unlikely that there is anyone in DFID who doesn't recognise how important it is to learn from failure. We have all seen the hugely impressive results we can achieve (check out our website and other DFID bloggers) but we know we can do better. We are here to succeed for the world poorest people but we know that failure is - and will continue to be - a reality.

Even then, it is hard to talk about failure. DFID's Director General for Policy, Michael Anderson, spelled it out at the Open Up Conference:

"there's a real temptation if you're working for a government department to portray everything as a victory. And, if there is a failure a real temptation to cover it up. We need to find a way to find the confidence to stand up to external criticism that comes with failure"

There could be many potential reasons for this: personal pride, fear of undermining the case for aid, an optimism bias and career incentives all play their part. In the complex world of international development (Owen Barders' recent work on complexity theory) developing the skills to diagnose and analyse failure is a real challenge.

But there are some simple things we can do to get started. DFID's transparency commitments as part of the International Aid Transparency Initiative mean that anybody can review any project document, monitoring report or evaluation report and see for themselves what's working and what's not. Internally, the 2012 annual meetings of our Senior Civil Service and our programme managers from around the world both agreed that failure is a part of our business and that a more pragmatic and open approach will make us better at fulfilling our global objectives.

We are starting to encourage our partners to study and publicise not just the stories of success but to also be prepared to talk about - and learn from - the bad news too. The newly announced code for our suppliers explicitly expects partners to accept "responsibility for their role, including being honest when things go wrong so that lessons can be learned". It works the other way too: in the DRC we run an annual survey of our partner organisations to find out what is good and bad about working with DFID, reinforcing the message that we are serious about learning and serious about improving the impact of our investments. Our public dissemination of the Tuungane evaluation is a good example our willingness to be open about what has not worked, an openness that has surprised a number of our partners.

But failing is still very hard work and we know there is much more to do and are in the market for ideas...

We conduct evaluations across our programmes to find answers to these questions to help improve the quality of our investments and to shape future programme design and implementation.  One example is the independent evaluation of a major community development programme in the DRC (the Tuungane Programme, Swahili for ‘lets unite’), with some interesting results.

Children in a school constructed by the community in Monaria in eastern DRC as part of the Tuungane programme. Picture: Susan Schulman

The Columbia University evaluation team found that the programme has helped communities prioritise and manage the development of a range of vital local infrastructure projects (health centres, schools, roads, water points) that community members and local officials have widely praised. DFID staff and ministers have consistently been impressed by way the programme empowers communities to take charge of their own development, something that is at the heart of the Prime Minister’s Golden Thread narrative (which I will come back to in a future blog), and a central pillar of all new DFID programming in the DRC. International Rescue Committee (IRC) and its staff who work in challenging - and often dangerous - conditions have seen the benefits first-hand.

However, when the Tuungane programme was created after the 2009 peace settlement, it was designed as a post-conflict programme that would contribute to helping communities recover from years of conflict, strengthening coherence and ultimately governance. Yet disappointingly, the evaluators have found no evidence of a 'Tuungane' effect under the terms of the evaluation when compared to other communities in terms of social or behavioural changes.

It is still unclear why this key programme, so widely regarded, is not having the kind of change anticipated. So what has happened? Were we over-ambitious from the start? Was the design flawed? Is there another explanation for positive outcomes in control communities? The truth is that we don't know yet and we are working hard to find out why; it is probably a combination of all of the above.

Knowledge is power

What we do know is that the findings of this evaluation are important not just for us but for international development efforts generally. We know that we need to share knowledge and learn from it. IRC and the DFID team are working together to proactively communicate what we have learnt and extract lessons to contribute to the improvement of this and other development programmes.

We need to learn to share these kinds of lessons without undermining the case for international development. There is often more to learn from failure than success and not everything that looks like failure should reflect badly on DFID, or development. Publicly showing that we are serious about continuous learning and improving the impact of our investments will increase our credibility and help us hold our heads high in the confidence that we are doing the very best with tax-payers money.

We need to continue to encourage our partners and other donors to study and publicise not just the stories of success but to also be prepared to talk about – and learn from – the bad news too.

We are not alone. Tim Harford, the 'undercover economist', published an article in The Financial Times on theTuungane evaluation last year in which he praised the willingness of those involved to commission a study of this type. His latest book, 'Adapt - why success always starts with failure', supports precisely this idea and in my mind, should become a key development primer.

It is tough for us to talk about failure. In my next blog I will come back to this by taking a look at what others in the development sector are doing to tackle this challenge.

Upside down truck on the road to Banalia

Roads are a critical piece of social, economic, and communications infrastructure. Over the past 30 years, DRC’s road network has deteriorated, with whole roads disappearing altogether, or being reduced to tracks passable only on foot or bike. Working with the World Bank and with DRC road agencies, theUKis one of the donors investing in upgrading and rehabilitating roads as an essential step in reconnecting this huge and fractured country.

Chinese made bicycles are the most common vehicle on the road – even after the road has been repaired. The bikes carry enormous loads – tall woven baskets strapped either side of the rear wheel and filled to the brim with manioc. Two or three heavy white sacks filled with charcoal from the forest and destined for the kitchens of Kisangani. On the return trip, the bikes resemble a mobile shop, festooned with toiletries, plastic cups and buckets, and imitation croc shoes – signs of market activity deep in the forest.

Ferry is vital to cross the Aruwimi River

The AruwimiRiverat Banalia is a formidable barrier. Fast flowing and half a kilometre wide. With no bridge, a well maintained ferry is the only way across. In the wheel house the captain edges the boat out into the current, pointing the bow upstream with just a fraction on the starboard engine to carve a long arc across to the other side. The captain uses the force of the river to nudge the ferry into shore.

The road crew works deep in the forest, pushing back the under-growth, tipping over enormous bamboo plants to reveal the road. Working with graders and soft-tired rollers they shape the red clay into a smooth cambered surface – easy to drive when dry, but turning to glass when it rains, which it does every day.

Roads under construction deep in the forest.

Back in Banalia we spend the night at the convent – the only available accommodation. The nuns provide us with supper – mashed plantain and some kind of bushmeat. The road is allowing forest animals to be poached at an alarming rate – up to 10 tonnes each month. Along with logging and charcoal production, the bush meat trade is one of the potentially negative consequences of the road programme that we will mitigate through ProRoutes.

The Health Center in Dikwa, one of the many health centers supported by UK aid in DRC

As elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, roads are a major conduit for HIV. As people around the world marked World AIDS Day last Saturday, it was an opportunity to put a global spotlight on preventing new infections. The latest UN report shows a more than 50% reduction in the rate of new HIV infections across 25 low and middle-income countries – with more than half inAfrica, the region most affected by HIV.

Paradoxically, DRC’s lack of road infrastructure has prevented transmission of HIV – but as roads are rehabilitated there is a real risk that HIV will follow. Part of ProRoutes is working to inform local communities of the risks, give them access to information and condoms, and carefully monitor infection rates. This part of the programme also works with our health programme – we pass five health centres as we return to Kisangani. This is one example of how different parts of British aid in the DRC are working together to help poor people.

A chicken bravely crosses the road

As we move back down to Kisangani, our speed increases. Good roads encourage fast driving, making road safety a major issue (Vicky Seymour's next blog post will focus on road safety in DRC). Communities live close to the road, with kids playing across the road between families and neighbours.

As we head back to Kisangani the local poultry choose the last possible second to dive across the road. They can run fast, and use their wings when necessary – but not all make it.

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.

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 against the failure of government and of the UN to protect the regional capital. It’s incredibly sad to leave at such a critical time – I hope to get back as soon as possible – but good to be back in Kinshasa where we are planning how best to respond to needs generated by the latest wave of fighting. There’s not much I can add for now, but as the dust starts to settle, the humanitarian picture becomes clearer and the UK response gets under way, I’ll give you a full update.

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and with that in mind I wanted to share some reflections I put down on paper a few weeks ago, when eastern DRC was quieter, but when the everyday cost of conflict for people was perhaps no less than it is today.

This week has been rare – under normal circumstances DRC doesn’t only miss the front page, it’s barely covered at all. Sadly, if people know only one thing about DRC, it’s likely to be the shocking statistic that a woman is raped here every minute. Widespread sexual violence, and the crippling social stigma and rejection which can so often result from it, are a common feature of the few stories which get told about this place.

When I arrived in Kinshasa I have to admit that my assessment was that this was an overcrowded space – everyone was throwing money at the problem and the focus on women as victims detracted from more important efforts to support women’s economic empowerment, change laws which hold women back, and promote women’s participation in political and community leadership. I still believe that money is only half of the answer, and that addressing root causes of rape is an important and neglected part of the story. It’s also important that rape isn’t given some kind of special status – appalling violence and human rights abuses of all kinds are committed against civilians throughout eastern Congo every day. But encounters I’ve had since arriving here have reminded me about the scale and impact of the problem of sexual violence in conflict here, and of the need to do more and to do better by the women (and men) it affects.

A few weeks ago I was in a small village in rural South Kivu. I knew it was on the periphery of a region that had recently seen some violence, and that the area hosts tens of thousands of displaced people from neighbouring conflict zones, but after a day visiting extremely poor but seemingly peaceful villages and talking about survival strategies for getting from one harvest to the next I’d been lulled into feeling that we were in some Congolese version of The Shire – rolling hills and quiet, if stretched, lives.

On the final evening I was sitting outside our guesthouse writing up some notes from the day. Three middle-aged women came and sat quietly beside me. We exchanged greetings and I got on with writing. Then one woman started explaining something to me in Swahili. I told her I didn’t understand, but she kept trying, quietly and calmly. Eventually one of the women left, and came back with a girl she’d found on the road who spoke some French. Through her they explained that they’d just arrived here. FDLR – a major armed group - had attacked their village, burnt their houses and killed their husbands, at least one of whom had been burnt alive. The most talkative of the three pulled her skirt to one side and showed me the horrific burns all over her legs. The women had been raped. The woman with the burns explained that she had been tied to the ground with her arms outstretched, and raped multiple times by multiple people. They’d received no help, they said. They’d just had to quickly gather what they could and walk more than 30km, up and down vertical hills, to settle with distant relatives. When had this happened? Saturday – five days previously.

In any other country this one event would make headline news for weeks, but this is such an everyday occurrence here that these women not only didn’t make headlines but didn’t get help. They just packed up, walked tens of kilometres up and down steep hills, and quietly settled with relatives and tried to make do.

Women in North Kivu wait in line to access a UNICEF-run voucher fair - projects such as this seek to empower women by putting spending power in their hands

When I got back to town I visited Panzi hospital, which contains a sexual violence unit (built by DFID in 2002) which is the reference for the whole of South Kivu. The director of the hospital, Dr Denis Mukwege, was attacked in his home a few weeks after I met him – an incident which provoked international outcry. Tall, gentle and clearly loved by his staff and patients, Mukwege has been awarded several international human rights awards for his work here. The hospital sees around 3,000 gynaecology patients per year – roughly half of whom are victims of sexual violence. The worsening conflict in 2012, said Mukwege, has led to a sharp rise in incidents of sexual violence in the province. The deterioration in the security situation, however, has meant that fewer people are able to travel and access assistance. Local health workers call the hospital from Fizi, Baraka and Kabare to say they’ve received women suffering terrible complications from rape, but cannot transport them to Bukavu for treatment because the routes are too dangerous.

Mukwege says you see things in this job that keep you awake at night. He remembers one young woman who came to the hospital from Shabunda territory. She’d been raped and was heavily pregnant. Thankfully she gave birth safely, and tests revealed she’d not contracted any diseases. She begged not to be sent back to her village, but the hospital was unable to accommodate her after the birth, and she was told she had to return home. A few months later she was transported back in the hospital. When she had returned to the village she’d been raped again. This time she had not been so lucky, and tests revealed that she’d contracted HIV. Once again the hospital had no choice but to send her back to her village after treatment, and Dr Mukwege says he worries about her every day.

The problem of sexual violence in DRC is not going away. UK humanitarian support provides more than 2,000 victims of sexual violence with emergency medical care, basic psychological support and help rebuilding their livelihoods each year. Ending conflict in the Kivus and stepping up civilian protection efforts is clearly vitally important here, as is supporting rapid response mechanisms that get victims the help they need when they need it. But, as a wise friend here pointed out to me, it’s about more than this. DFID DRC is putting an increased emphasis on tackling the legal, social and economic barriers to women’s empowerment in DRC. We need to move beyond a focus on women as victims here to one of women as active agents of change.

Right, back to focussing on current events. I’ll check in next week to let you know what we’re doing to help those affected by the current wave of fighting. Until then, please keep DRC in your thoughts.

The food and goods fair organised in North Kivu by NRC.

The fair provided an opportunity:

• For people displaced by the fighting to purchase some food and a few household items to help them get back on their feet.

• To support the families that had taken them in, and to sustain them until it was safe to return to their homes and fields.

• The fair also stimulates local economic activity as local traders provide the goods.

The team of evaluator collects the beneficiaries' comments about the fair

Each family was given a sheet of dollar tokens that they spend at the various stalls. Corrugated sheeting for roofs was a popular purchase, as were mattresses and aluminium cooking pots. Some women were negotiating prices for brightly coloured fabric and imported jeans. My effort to help an old lady tie her bundle of goods together ready to be head-carried home was met with polite acquiescence. She was kind enough to let me walk away before she undid it and re-tied it herself. At the exit to the fair, dressed in orange bibs, were a team of evaluators. Their role was to ask one in ten of the shoppers about their experience and what other commodities they would like to see on offer. In the food fair, huge sacks of maize, wheat flour, rice, and beans were being weighed, traded, and then transported by boys on their chukudus. The chukudu is both work of art and appropriate technology. A wooden scooter with cow-horn handle bars capable of carrying up to 400kgs – perfectly adapted to the terrain and used to haul the most preposterous loads.

 The chukudu: a wooden scooter with cow-horn handle bars.

Maintaining the orange theme, huge vats of palm oil, a highly calorific staple of Congolese cuisine, were being boiled up. Next to the oil, dried fish was being sorted and sold. Because of the altitude, and the soft ground into which our helicopter had sunk, the team had to be taken out in two batches. So there we were, standing in the field, waiting, and hoping for the return of the helicopter. Nothing else to do but get out the BlackBerry and clear a few emails. It may not be Orange, but Vodacom’s signal is strong – even in this remote part of the Congo.

The emergency food fair offers local food such as palm oil and dried fish

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.

Last week I travelled to the province of Equateur in north-western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to launch a bednet distribution programme that will protect 8 million people from malaria.

Equateur is the DRC's largest province - larger than Zimbabwe. Yet, it is marginalised by government and aid programmes alike. It is physically isolated, straddling the Congo river and covered in a maze of waterways and equatorial rainforest. It would be fair to say that it is probably one of the most remote and inaccessible places there is - at least where the Department for International Development (DFID) works.

UK aid will save the lives of around 40,000 children under 5, about as many as could be seated in Chelsea Football Club's stadium. Picture: wkocjan via Flickr Creative Commons

And, it is perhaps one of the most challenging environments to embark on a programme to provide every person – for the first time – with a mosquito net to sleep under to protect them from catching and spreading malaria.

Malaria is the major killer of pregnant women and children under 5 in Equateur. It is largely responsible for the horrific under 5 mortality rate which means that 171 children in every 1,000 die before their 5th birthday (the rate for the UK is 5 per 1,000). That means that my 4 year old daughter would be 35 times more likely to die in Equateur than in the UK.

The reality of saving lives in challenging environments

I travelled to the provincial capital Mbandaka and then a further 2 hours up river (thanks to the expert flying of Aviation Sans Frontières) to Lisala to launch the distribution of 4.2 million mosquito nets that will save the lives of around 40,000 children. I spent 3 days visiting distribution points and seeing first-hand the practical realities of working in one of the country’s most challenging operating environments.

The pictures below give an idea of the logistical challenges DFID's implementing partner - Population Services International / Association de Santé Familiale (PSI/ASF) - face as they work out the best and most effective ways to get nets to every family in the province, through forests and across rivers.

Challenge: Getting bednets to remote locations across forests and rivers in the second largest country in Africa.

I came home rocked by the reality of programming in this environment with more questions than answers. This project is relatively simple to explain: we buy nets, we communicate on how to use them, and the nets are distributed. Yet, in Equateur it could not be more challenging.

Later, putting my two small children (both under 5 years old) to bed, I notice holes forming in their nets after 18 months use. How long will the nets in Equateur really last in villages where people don't have electricity to see at night or wooden frames to hold the nets up? What do they do when there is nowhere to buy a replacement? What happens when these nets approach the end of their useable lives after two or three  years, or if like my kids' nets they start to deteriorate?

I had previously advocated that we need to move towards a ‘social marketing’ approach, one that provides nets at a subsidised price to allow an exit strategy for external financers. Elsewhere maybe, but here in Equateur even the smallest price may be too much at this point.

The DRC Government plans that Equateur will have another distribution of nets 3 years from now. But this is uncertain and will depend on sufficient funding being secured and all the usual delays purchasing and transporting nets. Is it really efficient to go through this whole process again?

Without follow-up people will stop using nets at night and malaria will increase again. Can we strengthen health services to ensure that there is routine follow-up that provides nets to protect the most vulnerable. But what happens when there are few - if any - health services?

These questions apply across our programmes and are a common threat which I will return to through these blogs. More immediately, I return to Kinshasa committed to ensuring that the investments in raising awareness and increasing  the use of nets to combat malaria are maximised.

More widely, it is clear that we need to work with the DRC government and international and national partners to think about how we tackle the challenges of poverty in Equateur head on.

View more photos in my facebook album.