One of the things I love about my job is getting to meet people from all over the world. Just recently, I had the opportunity to meet a bunch of officials from Saudi Arabia. They were in charge of running the …
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 …
My primary school had some quite strong incentives to drive up performance. Every end of term, our teachers would test us and rank my classmates and I against each other. It was the extremes that mattered – top and bottom. …
I sometimes worry that I work too hard. This is the third valentine's date with my husband that I've missed because of working abroad. I'm currently in Nigeria for the fifth meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation's …
In January, I always enjoy reading the Economist's World In Year X publication – which sets out their forecasts for big headlines under a number of categories. What I particularly like is their review of how correct their forecasts were …
During my teenage years, I had a good number of friends who were determined to be DJs. Personally, I was never very excited by DJ'ing, mostly because I found it rather difficult to a) find great music that other people …
When I was a teenager, I lived in a city called St Albans. At the entrance there was always a sign showing that it was "twinned" with a number of other towns or cities around the world. It's twinned with …
Here in the UK, according to national statistics (PDF 2.44MB) the government spends an average of £8,745 on each person per year providing services. But if you live in a lower middle-income country like Pakistan or Sudan, your government will …
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 …
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