I spent most of my nine years in East Africa staring at stacks of compliance spreadsheets that promised everything was under control, while knowing damn …
Controls That Actually Catch Leakage
Most Work, Uncounted
I once spent three weeks in a dusty transit hub outside Goma, waiting for a shipment of antibiotics that the official manifests said had already …
What Fair Trade Guarantees
I spent nine years in the back of Land Rovers and dusty warehouses across East Africa, and if there is one thing I learned, it’s …
Tracking Seventeen Goals With Missing Data
I spent a decade in the back of dusty Land Cruisers across South Sudan and the DRC, where the only metric that mattered was the …
Reading an Annual Report Sceptically
I spent nine years in the back of dusty Land Cruisers across East Africa, watching millions of dollars in aid move through corridors of broken …
The Reform Agenda and What Moved
I spent most of my nine years in East Africa staring at cargo manifests and listening to the diesel engines of aging Mercedes trucks, not …
Insuring Against a Drought
I remember sitting in a humid, windowless office in Goma, staring at a stack of “emergency relief” brochures that promised everything but delivered nothing. The …
Complaints Mechanisms That Get Answered
I’ve sat through enough donor briefings to know that most people treat “accountability to affected people” like a sacred, abstract ritual—something you achieve by filing …
Prevention Is Cheaper and Harder to Fund
I remember sitting in a humid, windowless office in Goma, staring at a spreadsheet that claimed we had “secured significant multi-year commitments” for regional resilience. …
Releasing Money on a Forecast
I spent a decade watching NGOs scramble to move tons of grain or medical supplies only after the drought had already turned the soil to …