Shukri Gesod is an elegant and supremely confident young Somali (from Puntland) who moved to Oxfam from DFID a year ago. She originally wanted to be a barrister in the UK (where she partly grew up after moving from Somali to Tanzania as a baby), but got into development while studying at East Anglia (law) and SOAS (a globalization, governance and development masters). Now she's our governance adviser in Somaliland. She's an arch... Read more

What you make of 2011 depends on your vantage point. The year's events look completely different depending on whether you are sitting at the bottom or the top, in the old north or the old south. From the bottom, this was a year of protest and revolution, toppling tyrants and throwing up new governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and (probably) Yemen. So far, thankfully, fears about the negative impact of such revolutions on women's... Read more

If you’re heading for the UK’s annual Development Studies talkathon in York next week, why not drop in to Oxfam’s panel on the new GROW campaign, catchily titled ‘Rethinking Development in an Age of Scarcity and Uncertainty: New Values, Voices and Alliances'? It’s on Wednesday 21 September at 2.30 in room 123 in Vanbrugh College, and features the following line-up of top notch gabsters (and me): How... Read more