We work around Africa to increase access to basic services, help after humanitarian emergencies and empower girls and women, ultimately helping people lift themselves out of poverty. In these blogs country teams discuss their work and progress towards these and other goals.
Today is the first day of Baroness Northover’s visit to Tanzania, where she is championing the progress of development programmes supported by DFID. The trip’s overarching theme is ‘leave no one behind’ – a key principle the UK is aiming …
I had a moment of dizzying clarity during a visit to The Gambia last month, when policy lines revisited in briefings, meetings and documents burst back into life, regained their power and gave a renewed sense of purpose to my …
We often associate FGM with the harmful physical effects suffered by more than 125 million women worldwide. There is much less awareness about the psychological effects that can haunt a woman throughout her lifetime. I know from experience that sometimes …
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 …
Many girls’ and women’s faces in Mozambique will stay with me. But 3 of those faces had a particularly strong impact – those of Isalinha, Ana, and especially a young mother in Manica province, whose name I may never know. …
Flying into Tete in Northern Mozambique last week, I could see first-hand the evidence of Mozambique’s resource boom. Most of my fellow passengers were mining engineers or the like, heading for the Brazilian mining company Vale’s huge open-cast mine in …
This week, Addis Ababa has played host to the African Union (AU) Summit. While 2015 is the AU’s year of women’s empowerment – one of the issues I’ve focused on here this week – Ebola has, of course, taken centre …
Small faces may look up at me equally quizzically as I visit a maternity hospital in Sudan. But from these first moments, the path for a girl is mapped out differently from that for a boy. And that has included the …
For many of us, the New Year may mean resolutions vaguely made and probably never kept. They usually concern less than fundamental things. But for the people of Darfur, caught up in a now largely forgotten conflict, 2015 has so far …
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, …
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