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.
Election season is fast approaching in Tanzania, but retiring President Kikwete continues to take stock of his tenure with a series of events, not least the inaugural Africa Open Data Conference that was hosted in Dar es Salaam last week. …
Education partnerships, and how to evolve and improve them, is one of the hot topics at the 2015 World Education Forum in Korea, where the mixed progress on the 2000 Education For All and Education Millennium Development Goals are …
I’m not sure whether it was tempting fate on Friday the 13th, or an early Valentine’s gift to the nation, but Tanzanian President H.E Kikwete boldly launched a new national Education and Training Policy (ETP), the first for almost 20 …
The New Year started with humid weather and heavy rains in Dar es Salaam, portentous signs for a year likely to bring change, not least in parliamentary elections - as President Kikwete completes his final and second term in office, …
Returning from Tanzania’s geographically central but small capital city Dodoma to the coastal mega-city of Dar es Salaam, I reflected upon this slightly surreal experience. I was on board the only scheduled flight, a small 12 seater plane cruising at …
Having spent most of the past year getting to grips with new results based instruments to support Tanzania's delivery of education, it was a refreshing change to get involved in a different sort of innovation with different actors that bring …
Two years have whizzed past since I first arrived to work in Tanzania and was sent straight down to the capital Dodoma to attend the Parliament (Bunge) budget debate. I’m now at the likely mid-point of my assignment, so it’s …
In the spirit of the UK aid watchbody ICAI's recommendation to ramp up institutional learning within DFID, a welcome initiative for advisers like myself is to support programme design and review in other countries, promoting the sharing of experience and …
Designing a large performance or results based education financing programme in Tanzania has certainly been a challenge over the past months. In particular getting the indicators right: how they can realistically be linked to achievable targets that both stretch and …
Nelson Mandela's legacy in Tanzania is rapidly expanding, as I learnt just days after returning from Washington DC last December, where the White House flag was at half mast as a mark of respect. Nearly a decade after Mandela met …
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