Whilst I was still a young child, Tanzania's founding father and President Julius Nyerere, highlighted the benefits of mass education on accountability to the people: "An educated Ujamaa Village, for example, will neither allow nor tolerate dishonesty among its accountants or authoritarianism among its leaders. An educated population will challenge the actions of its elected representatives, [...]

We review our programmes annually to monitor progress. Security concerns in Afghanistan make these reviews more challenging than in other countries but, with careful planning much can be achieved and learned. I recently joined the team reviewing a new project which focuses on strengthening civil society, 'Tawanmandi', on a trip to the provincial capital of Balkh province, [...]

Nearly two weeks ago now, I visited four polling centres around Kabul as part of the joint diplomatic observation of Afghanistan’s 2010 parliamentary elections on 18 September. The UK media covered the Afghan parliamentary elections closely so I’m sure you will have seen some of the reports, but here are my impressions of the day... [...]

That's me under a tree, trying to figure out why the school behind me wasn't currently a place of learning.     A recent visit I made to a ‘middle belt’ (ethnically mixed area with both Muslim and Christian inhabitants) Local Government Authority was helpful in illustrating the challenges we face in trying to improve the quality [...]

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, but lots has been happening here in Nepal. If I’d written before Christmas, I think that my blog would have been pretty downbeat. Up until almost the very end of the year there was very little progress on the peace process and it was getting harder to be [...]

I had a really interesting meeting at the end of last week on how we might increase the participation and voice of civil society in both health and HIV/AIDS policy in Mozambique.  The meeting took place in the DFID office, the air-conditioning was on high, as it is high summer and hot outside, but it was a [...]

I am just coming from a meeting with the Permanent Secretary, and Directors in the Ministry of Health. They kindly let me take a picture at the start of the meeting, which was on the 7th floor of the Ministry of Health, right next to the Permanent Secretary's office. You can see the PS, Dr. Tomo next [...]

I have been incredibly busy in the two weeks following on from World AIDS Day. My DFID colleague Katie Bigmore and I and Mauricio Cysne from UNAIDS joined a team from the World Bank who were reviewing Mozambique’s World Bank MAP programme (Multi-country HIV/AIDS Programme for Africa). The MAP programme provides grant financing rather than [...]