I had the pleasure of working in the Botswana civil service in the 1970s, but not via the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) fellowship route. I worked as a contracted officer in the Ministry of Agriculture where Andrew Bird and I worked closely together for a time. Andrew gave me my first lesson in how to…

These are strange times currently as we all know, but I was very surprised recently to receive, quite out of the blue, three curious calls on my time.   Land, HIV and AIDS  On 11th March I received an email from Emma Gillies of the University of British Columbia. She and her team are looking…

Sound, sustainable land management is critical to the long-term viability of Mongolia’s traditional herding way of life. And careful planning at local level, in a participatory and gender-inclusive way, is needed to underpin that. In August 2018, Mongolia’s Agency for Land Administration and Management, Geodesy and Cartography (ALAMGAC), embarked on a formal collaboration to develop…

Since 2019 Mokoro have been carrying out the long-term monitoring and evaluation of WFP Kenya’s Sustainable Food Systems Programme (2018-2023) which is being implemented in 14 arid and semi-arid areas of Kenya. In 2020 the annual outcome monitoring was hampered by the restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic. This article, written by Mokoro’s Survey Coordinator, Ernest…

“You know it’s not really British Africa”, said the man on the British bus. I was nine or ten years old, making my way across town to my primary school, proudly clutching the Atlas Of British Africa that I had painstakingly made for a school project. On each page, a traced map of a different…

Dear Evaluation Manager Thank you for asking us about the commenting process for the draft report we have just submitted. We don’t have much time if a revised report is to be circulated before the holiday season. However, we see this as an opportunity to pilot a remedy for the commentovirus pandemic that is debilitating…

In this article Catherine Dom reviews Land to the Tiller: an interview with Zegeye Asfaw by Ann Oosthuizen. This is an interview with Zegeye Asfaw from 2012, telling the story of his life, of the struggle for land reform in Ethiopia, and of the personal cost of that struggle for himself and others.   Land to the Tiller…

In central Mongolia, the summer is warm and soft rain falls on the steppes. For herders like Baasandorj, it is a busy time of year, filled with combing sheep’s wool, milking cows and making dairy products for the winter. I first met Baasandorj in February 2018 while carrying out a baseline survey for a long-term…

“It’s hard to find the right life partner in my soum (district). Most of the girls went to school, then to university in the city. Not many of them are good at herding.” Like most young women who grew up in the city, I usually think of herders as quiet men with closed faces that…

In this article Robin Palmer reviews Land to the Tiller: an interview with Zegeye Asfaw by Ann Oosthuizen. This is an interview with Zegeye Asfaw from 2012, telling the story of his life, of the struggle for land reform in Ethiopia, and of the personal cost of that struggle for himself and others.   This…