I remember standing on a mud-slicked ridge outside Goma in 2014, watching a convoy of white Land Cruisers idle because the bridge we’d budgeted for …
Loss and Damage Explained
When Someone Asks You Not to Publish
I remember sitting in a humid, corrugated metal office in Goma, staring at a stack of reports that were being held back by a regional …
Correcting Something Publicly
I remember sitting in a humid warehouse outside of Goma, staring at a manifest that claimed we’d dispatched forty crates of antibiotics when, in reality, …
Multi Year Funding for a Ten Year Crisis
I remember sitting in a humid warehouse outside Goma, staring at a spreadsheet that claimed we had secured millions for the region. The numbers looked …
Finding Out Who Owns a Company
I remember sitting in a humid, windowless office in Goma, staring at a stack of procurement bids that looked far too clean to be true. …
Adaptation With Concrete Examples
I spent a decade in South Sudan and eastern DRC watching people sit in air-conditioned conference rooms in Geneva debating “resilience frameworks.” They use words …
Registering People Who Have No Documents
I remember sitting in a humid tent outside Goma, staring at a stack of laminated registration forms that were more useful as scrap paper than …
Who Gets Missed and Why
I remember sitting in a humid warehouse outside Goma, staring at a digital spreadsheet that claimed our distribution was 95% efficient. On the screen, everything …
Building Manufacturing Capacity Locally
I spent a decade in the DRC and South Sudan watching policy experts in Geneva debate the intricacies of how local manufacturing is supported, while …
Building a Payment System From Scratch
I’ve sat through enough donor briefings in Geneva to know that people love to talk about “frameworks,” “digitization,” and “resilience metrics.” They treat the construction …