Articles

Reflections from our recent work, and topical issues for the sector

Tracking finances for cross-sectoral priorities

Sectors are the spinal column of the public sector, offering an orderly and pragmatic way of arranging public sector affairs and dicing up resources. The boundaries between them, however, are more arbitrary than is commonly acknowledged. This has become more apparent in recent year as a number of issues which don’t fit comfortably in any of…

Full carbon analysis for forestry

Forests are often presented as the lungs of the planet, sequestering large amounts of CO2. Sadly for lovers of forests, this is incomplete and misleading. Mature natural forests on drained soils exist in ‘carbon equilibrium’, breathing out as much carbon through decomposition as they breathe in through photosynthesis. Only in wetlands is there a significant…

G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition

Whenever I introduce myself in the name of my job these days, I dread the question that follows almost instinctively: ‘what is the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition?’ It is always a 5- minute-plus conversation to give an answer.  So I have developed a survival strategy when introducing myself outside the circles of…

Women’s Economic Empowerment

Whilst women’s economic empowerment has gained considerable traction both in the development arena and in the corporate world and beyond, it has also been the subject of significant debate. On Friday 19th September 2014, Mokoro hosted a seminar, chaired by Sally Baden (Independent Consultant), which brought together Dr Elizabeth Daley (Mokoro Principal Consultant), Dr Catherine…

Celebrating Lionel Cliffe

A remarkable colloquium was held in Cape Town on October 20-21 to celebrate the life and work of Lionel Cliffe, who died of cancer last year.[1] Lionel was a man of very many parts – a prolific radical academic, a committed activist, a keen cricketer, the principal founder in 1974 of the Review of African…

Electronic surveys: pleasures and pitfalls

  With the advent of web-based electronic surveys it is now possible, with just a few clicks, to create a professional-looking survey and send it out to hundreds of people all around the world, effortlessly garnering their views on a whole variety of topics.  This is a great boon for evaluators who no longer have…

The Changing Climate of NGOs

In the past forty to fifty years, the landscape in which NGOs function has morphed into a very different picture to the one that existed when many NGOs were conceived. As a result, a situation has arisen where old strategies and structures are becoming increasingly less relevant and sustainable for the future of these organisations….

Travelling Hopefully in the Eastern Caribbean

In the Lesser Antilles, the market of the hotel industry is geared to pre-booked travellers, with accommodation reserved in advance through US-based on-line agencies, at a price. On my recent assignment, I wanted to avoid holiday hotels and, where possible, find low-cost accommodation and use local transport. I travelled light with a small carry-on brief…

Researching Change and Continuity in Rural Ethiopia

The WIDE (Wellbeing and Illbeing Dynamics in Ethiopia) research began in 1994 when Pip Bevan, sociologist working at the University of Oxford, and Alula Pankhurst, anthropologist working at the University of Addis Ababa, obtained funding to research fifteen rural communities. These had been selected by economists from the two universities to exemplify different types of…

Nutrition, Food Security & Livelihoods

With the significantly increased pressure on the global health and development community to meet its commitments on hunger and undernutrition, Mokoro’s recent seminar came as timely and topical. The seminar brought forward some leading research in nutrition, food security and livelihoods from three of our partners: NutritionWorks, Valid International and The Food Economy Group. Paul…