Anyone following my Twitter account will have noticed that I've recently developed a strange obsession with all things China. China even featured in my blog post last week, although my key message was about development partnerships. The reason I've been …
A couple of weekends ago, the Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang made his first ever trip to Africa, visiting Angola, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Kenya. This was a significant date. 50 years ago, the then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai made the …
I went to the launch of a new website, Turning the World Upside Down last week, and spent a fascinating 2 hours hearing about innovative ideas and approaches from poor and middle income countries that might help inform or shape …
A couple of days ago, I had coffee with a friend and ended up talking about my move from London to Glasgow, just over a year and a half ago. I told my friend that when I first moved, I started …
I’ve just finished reading "When a Billion Chinese Jump" by Jonathan Watts. It took me a while – it's a pretty huge book, with copious notes to flick back and forth to. But I am glad I got there. Yes, …
The Department for International Development is already the most respected of the country-to-country development agencies. But in the past it has been distracted by extraneous domestic political interests. In Andrew Mitchell, the department has a Secretary of State who is …
A couple of weeks ago I attended a number of fascinating sessions at the International Growth Centre’s Growth Week. One event that particularly stuck in my mind focused on the role China is playing in Africa. At the UN Millennium …
Yesterday while on the way to the hair salon, a 20-minute walk from the DFID office in downtown Beijing, I was stopped by several strangers asking me for the directions to the labour market. I can figure out from their outfits …
One of my roles working for DFID is to explore ways in which the UK and China can work together to promote development in Africa. We discuss these issues in big international meetings. We have started to do this in …
As a teenage girl I didn’t have a complex about how much I was eating. I got on-demand food when I wanted, and fought with my siblings when there was spare food on the table. East London wasn’t the rice …
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