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 …
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 …
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 …
About 4 months ago, I found out that a second cousin of mine who lives in Kenya, a beautiful sweet 5-year-old girl called Blessing, had been having problems walking. Her problems had become so severe she could no longer stand. …
Here in the UK, many news stories we hear about Somalia are negative. Somalia is one of the world's riskiest places, alongside countries like Syria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Twenty one out of the 28 countries that DFID …
Over the past 5 years we have almost entirely re-engineered the way DFID manages programmes and made some significant improvements. We have introduced, among other things: more rigorous design templates, tougher spending controls, better contract management policies, systematic quality assurance stronger use of …
A recent experience brought to life for me some of the issues facing developing countries trying to improve tax collection. I have lots of family in Kenya, and a few days ago, my dad received the news that a cargo …
No one would dare to suggest that every international development programme or policy has been a resounding success, yet finding the space to acknowledge and learn from instances of failure is still hard work. Happily though, there are signs that this …
Economists have a reputation for being sceptical. So much so that there is a book called the Skeptical Economist, and a new book referring to economics as the dismal science. This has a lot to do with our teaching. For …
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