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.
Regular readers might get the impression that there is only doom and gloom to emerge from Nigeria. Certainly the current violence in Jos with 100’s dead is deeply saddening. An earlier post after a visit I made to Jos between late …
An issue I’ve been struggling with in Nigeria for sometime is getting reliable information on how many children there actually are and, of course, how many go to school. Just before Xmas I was delighted to see the work underway …
Kano does not get many tourists – visas are awkward to come by and the overland route north across the Sahara to Europe has been closed for years due to insecurity. Recently I headed across to Zinder in Niger, the francophone desert …
Nigeria is currently going through its own mini World Cup fiesta. After many months of doubt, deliberation and dubious ‘readiness reports’ the FIFA Under 17 World Cup is on and much of this football crazy nation are intensively following the super …
Last week I was out on 'representational duty', attending a poverty summit held in Kano's neighbouring State, Jigawa, to listen to progress on impacting on poverty. What difference can a year make? Jigawa State with 4.3m people is not only as …
Awareness on climate change and the need for long term adaptation has been relatively slow to develop in Nigeria - 'Naija' in local slang - and with understandable reason. Some developing countries have never had major industrialisation or modern infrastructure, so the debate …
Baobab trees (genus Adansonia) are found in Africa and Australia, and have the ability to store literally tens of thousands of litres of water within their trunk giving them their distinctive shape. This gives rise to their informal name of 'bottle …
A current hot topic in development circles is whether at the upcoming UN general assembly meeting in New York, the advice of a topic level panel will be heeded to create a UN ‘super-agency’ for women. Currently a number of different …
I've been away on holiday in Europe for a few weeks in July, it was incredible to see the change to Kano when I got back. Same old crumbling cement blocks, pot-holed streets and blazing sun. But after regular rainstorms for a …
Apologies for not writing recently, in particular to Iphie, Iyinoluwa, Yassin and Elizabeth who gave such informed and passionate responses on the situation in the Niger Delta that I raised in my post about the Maureen Matheny Academy in Bayelsa State. You guys …
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