Introduction Accountability and transparency in public financial management (PFM) continue to be the focus for both governments and development partners. As such, the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) framework, the main tool used to assess strengths and weaknesses in PFM, is undergoing a transformation. This is the first significant change to the PEFA framework…

  This year the Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure (CAPE), based at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London, chose for its annual conference topic “Investment in infrastructure”, or “Bricks and dollars”. Sessions covered a gamut of issues including why there is a renewed push for infrastructure, how to decide what to build, how…

Mokoro has a long history of working on land issues, and our consultants have between them decades of experience working to strengthen and support ordinary men’s and women’s land rights. This has not always been easy. In the past, land rights have often been overlooked by the development community, in part because they are difficult…

Two years ago I invited myself to a conference at the University of Utrecht; this time around they invited me! I don’t think I’ve ever declined an invitation to attend an academic conference in the Netherlands. Well, why would I? A wonderful country, wonderful people who mostly cycle to work, great food and I get…

The Kenyan authorities recently calculated that traffic jams in Nairobi cost the economy $600,000 per day. That’s one city I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting recently, but a couple of others have been impressively, depressingly, frustratingly clogged with vehicles. I don’t know whether I’m the only stressed consultant who dreams about missing flights –…

The annual World Bank Land and Poverty Conference is one of the major events in the agenda of all those who work on land and related development issues. It brings together technical specialists, academics, government officers and development experts from all corners of the globe. As well as showcasing new work covering a huge range…

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…

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…

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…

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…