I was unprepared for what I saw at the Dadaab camp in Kenya. Totally unprepared for the utter sense of panic in the people I met there. These were the newcomers, people who could not fit into the largest refugee …
Yesterday, I played a "disaster game". It was part of an event organised by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), which has brought together development practitioners, students with unbelievable energy, and lawyers and economists that – like me – …
Mother's Day is usually a joyous occasion — and this year we have even more reason to celebrate. Mothers and their children are surviving today at higher rates than at any other point in history. In fact, just since 1990, …
As most people who have ever watched Comic Relief will know, I’ve been to Africa many times before. I’ve reported on the destruction wreaked by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, on drought, on famine, on kids forced to live on the streets …
One early July day, I made my first flight to Africa, was delivered with my blue rucksack to a guest house on Ngong Road in Nairobi, and enjoyed my first encounter with a noisy Mynah bird, singing loudly outside my …
Every year, like kids on a school trip to the zoo, DFID lets its education and health advisers all meet up to take stock and share their experiences over the past 12 months. Last week we gathered in Nairobi to …
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 …
Have you ever organised an event that flopped? In 1985 I was working for an international development NGO, and I organised a young people's fund raising event in a park in West London. It failed; few people came and even less …
Crossing the street the other morning to get through the front door of DFID’s London Headquarters, I was suddenly confronted with a new bunch of faces. Normally I do my hour and a half commute just concentrating on getting some work done …
In a previous post I argued that focusing on a particular type of technology is somewhat of a distraction when looking at the important issue of internet access for the world’s poor. I think there was broad agreement, that in …
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