Archive for 'Africa'
This blog comes directly from a UK aid-supported project on the frontlines. The Ni Nyampinga project is a magazine and radio show for teenage girls in Rwanda that focuses on empowering young women. It reports on issues and stories that matter to them and enables women to become journalists themselves. It is now one of Rwanda’s [...]
Welcome to my blog! In September I got my first break into the world of development and stepped inside the walls of the Department for International Development (DFID) in London as part of their first intake of Graduate Placements. I've made DFID's walls the theme of this blog. Whatever the organisation, their organisational website is [...]
#Egypt was the most popular Twitter hashtag in 2011, edging out other less revolutionary contenders like #JustinBeiber. ‘The power of we’ is the theme of today’s Blog Action Day, and although ‘beliebers’ might not necessarily agree, there could hardly be a more powerful example of the power of we than the thousands of people brought [...]
Over the past couple of weeks, two big changes have happened in my life. First, one of my sisters has moved to Glasgow from London with her little baby girl. So I've become a very busy auntie! Second, I've got a new job in DFID. I'll be supporting our Secretary of State to co-chair a [...]
Ex-President Jerry Rawlings stands in front of a baying crowd at an election rally, and bellows out to them “Protect your ballot boxes the way you would protect and defend your mother!” It’s a powerful moment from the fly-on-the-wall documentary An African Election which charts the nail-bitingly close 2008 Ghanaian election. The statement at once demonstrates the [...]
It’s good to be back in Sierra Leone again. I was last here in 2009. It is a country full of life, with a constant buzz about it. But it’s a country that has faced more than its fair share of problems and is again faced with another problem - cholera. Over 278 people have [...]
When I worked in Malawi in the early 1990s, the percentage of people infected with HIV was considerably higher, with 26% of the 15-49 year old age group estimated to be infected in the capital Lilongwe. Concern at the scale of the epidemic prompted me to establish an AIDS information and counselling centre in Mponela [...]
The last time I saw David was six months ago; he's now swapped Ghana's coastal, cocoa-growing Western region for the arid savannah of the Upper East region, but he's still doing the same job: getting DFID funded mosquito nets to some of Ghana's most remote and poorest communities. When I first met David last year, [...]
This Sunday, 1 April 2012, our tiny, Kenyan, DFID-funded media project is going to be on the red carpet in Cannes, France. The reason: Shujaaz has been nominated for the children and young people's category of the International Digital Emmy® Awards. Let me give you the inside track on our project: Shujaaz means 'hero' in [...]
It's the beginning of a new month, and I've just celebrated my 1st anniversary of blogging and tweeting about my work in DFID. I have to say I have really enjoyed it so far. It's brought Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into my life like never before! Last week on twitter, this map of twitter users [...]
