In August 2012 I joined DFID Tanzania as the Education Advisor, based in Dar es Salaam. My role is to support DFID's education programme co-ordination and management, which includes both budget support and project finance. Tanzania has made impressive gains in enrolling more children in school, but in recent years the quality of learning and the resultant learning outcomes have been disappointing. Since joining DFID full time in 2007 I have worked in Northern Nigeria and Zimbabwe (seconded to the European Union Delegation), both assignments with a focus on education policy and programming.
Tanzania’s Big Results Now! service delivery performance improvement initiative moves into its first full year of operation in 2014, with considerable interest in the national examination results that benchmark targets signed up to with personal commitment from Education Minister Shukuru …
I'm at home today (December 9th), as Tanzania celebrates Uhuru Day, the anniversary of Tanganyika's independence in 1961 from the UK. This year however the event has been tinged with sadness as the news of Nelson Mandela's death reverberated around …
The Tanzanian government launched a new website last week to establish a monitoring system to 'crowd source' oversight of a huge logistical exercise that is now underway. DFID Tanzania has been assigned the task of supporting the Tanzanian government to …
A little education can go a long way and provide young people with the competitive edge over their neighbours. This message really sunk home to me on a visit to Mafia: a beautiful, unspoilt Indian Ocean island off the coast …
I almost broke into a cold sweat entering the historic Oxford University Examination Schools for the first time in 20 years, memories of stumbling through a viva (oral examination) grilling and multiple 3 hour written papers on long forgotten inorganic chemistry …
"You should get out more!” my team leader has been nagging me for months, sitting in our office block in Dar es Salaam. Getting to see, and hopefully understanding more, about the real situation in rural Tanzania is essential. A …
Returning from a couple of wet and windy June weeks on holiday in the UK was actually quite a relief from the heat of Dar Es Salaam, but now Tanzania in mid winter is unusually a degree or two colder …
Almost a year has sped past since I attended the 2012 Education Budget debate in Tanzania's Parliament, the Bunge in Dodoma last year, in my first week's work. I was unable to make it this year, but it seems that the debate …
Tanzania's founding father Mwalimu (Swahili teacher) Julius Nyerere was certainly both erudite and multi-lingual; as he guided his country to independence in the 1960s he translated Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar into Swahili in his spare time. He …
With a day job dedicated to preaching the virtues of education - and how it should improve, I recently felt obliged to get my hands 'dirty' once more and enrolled on a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to see what …
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