Archive for 'aid effectiveness'
Every year, like kids on a school trip to the zoo, DFID lets its education and health advisers all meet up to take stock and share their experiences over the past 12 months. Last week we gathered in Nairobi to swap notes and learn from one another, grateful (after a lot of economising) that the [...]
Last Wednesday was Heroes Day in Mozambique and a national holiday. The web-link gives the background to the day, which commemorates the lives of soldiers lost in Mozambique’s Independence war, which ended in 1975. For me the day off was an opportunity to recover from the previous day’s intense and tiring workshop on how to [...]
The Universal Basic Education Intervention Fund (UBE-IF) established in 2005 is a key initiative to try to channel more of the Nigerian oil revenues directly to States to spend on schooling: classrooms, books and teacher training. Early implementation was plagued by fund flow hitches, corruption allegations and poor performance. A report commissioned found that by March 2008, [...]
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 [...]
Another leader making waves, this time of education reform, is the Hon. Commissioner of Education in Kwara State, Mr Bolaji Abdulahi. DFID education programmes have been working in Kwara since 2007 and we have constantly struggled to keep up with his whirlwind pace of reforms, aimed at getting the school system back on track. Bolaji speaks [...]
The statistics coming from Haiti now are like telephone numbers, numbing our sense of scale.
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 [...]
Each year the performance of the health sector in Mozambique is measured through a process known as the annual joint evaluation. I have provided some detail on this process in a previous blog, as well as giving a snap shot of some of the field visits involved. However, this is a quick post to acknowledge [...]
Amongst the snowstorm of information clogging the humanitarian wires (Alertnet, Reliefweb, etc) one little nugget, buried at the back of a WHO report caught my eye.
‘The airport is intermittently open and closed. In addition, supplies arriving into the country are piling on the tarmac…’
It is the beginning of the perennial, mega-disaster problem. The airport is [...]
I work in a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Helmand province, Afghanistan – part of the international mission to support the Government of Afghanistan and help Afghans govern their country for themselves. My job title is Economic Adviser. I work with the local government to support economic development in Helmand and help give people the chance [...]
It’s just 7.15 am and it is already hot. Not from the morning sun (even though it's out and shining), but from the high overnight temperature that has not receded (talk about climate change!). It was a hot night and we did not have electricity for most of it. I got out of bed just [...]
