Hands up who thought slavery and the slave trade was abolished years ago? Perhaps even centuries ago? In fact, despite being illegal in almost every country on earth, slavery exists nearly everywhere, and in staggering numbers. The International Labour Organisation estimates …
After all the excitement of the elections, I took the chance to have a couple of weeks off in Uganda and Ethiopia. Now I try not to think about work when I’m having some down time. But when your work …
If in March the weather was ‘unsettled’, in April it was most certainly stormy - both politically and climatically. I’m writing this post at dusk in the Kano airport ‘waiting room’ (lounge would be too grand a word), as this season’s first …
I managed a short trip to Swaziland last week. Just one night in Mbuluzi Game Reserve was enough to re-charge my batteries. It takes just an hour and a half to drive to the Swaziland border from Maputo, and 10 …
There was an absolute torrential downpour of rain last week, flooding the roads of Maputo and preventing a number of colleagues arriving at work. It was a bit of a wet welcome then for Beverley Warmington, DFID’s Director of West …
It ended up being a relatively late night on Tuesday, due to a working dinner which came at the end of a full day of discussions on the Global Fund. I say relatively late, as my working day normally begins …
During the last few months, I've been working away at my desk job in London, as well as making a couple of monitoring visits to Zambia & Madagascar. As a keen cyclist, I was interested to meet the Zambikes social business in Lusaka, who've been building high quality bikes in …
The DFID office in Mozambique is quiet now, with many people already on leave. However, we still have a couple of important meetings before the end of the year, discussing financial management and planning for the annual review of the …
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 …
Last Thursday, at around 8.30am, I sat in the queue at the Sir Sanusi Hospital waiting to see the doctor. There were 15 of us in the women’s queue and about the same number in the men’s. Two men came …
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