I spent nine years in East Africa watching people get lost in spreadsheets while the actual work stalled in the mud. I’ve sat in meetings …
Whether Climate Finance Is New Money
May 2026
Monitoring a Place You Cannot Visit
I spent nine years in the dust of South Sudan and the DRC, where “monitoring” usually meant a frantic radio call to see if a …
Oda Defined Properly
I remember sitting in a humid, corrugated iron warehouse outside Goma, staring at a stack of papers that claimed we had secured millions in funding. …
Twelve Donors, One Ministry
I once sat in a humid, windowless tent in Goma, watching three different agency heads argue over a color-coded spreadsheet while a shipment of temperature-sensitive …
Handling a Document You Cannot Source Publicly
Most people treat a data dump like a sacred religious relic, wasting weeks trying to decode the “intent” or the moral weight behind every single …
A Hotline That Gets Answered
I spent a decade in the dust of South Sudan and the DRC, and if there is one thing I learned, it is that nobody …
Seventeen Goals in Plain Terms
I spent a decade in South Sudan and eastern DRC watching high-level summits turn into glossy brochures, but I’ve never seen anything as disconnected from …
The Aid Effectiveness Agenda and Its Fate
I spent nine years watching people in air-conditioned offices in Geneva and DC argue over high-level metrics, while I was staring at a broken axle …
The Overhead Argument
I spent nine years watching NGOs argue over spreadsheets in air-conditioned offices while I was trying to figure out why a shipment of oxytocin was …
Beneficiary Data as a Risk
I once sat in a humid warehouse outside Goma, watching a junior officer try to explain a thirty-page digital encryption protocol to a driver who …