New partnerships often lead to innovative solutions for old problems. An example is the use of mobile telephones as a flood warning system in Ethiopia. When rainfall levels can be communicated instantly by upland farmers to lowland pastoralists, cattle, livelihoods and people can be saved. In this example the unlikely partnership between local communities, a mobile phone company and an INGO thus created a positive development gain. In a similar... Read more

Gender mainstreaming.  The phrase may remind me sometimes of Jane Austen's comment on Basingstoke - 'there is something direful in the very sound'… yet I, and other gender and development specialists, spend my life doing it. Gender Mainstreaming is the process of integrating the aims of gender equality and women's rights into the agendas, policies, and practices of governments and NGOs throughout the world. It was first... Read more

For a time in the nineties and early noughties, as financial services promised untold riches for all, discussing inequality was seen as the preserve of people at the fringe of debate. Since the onset of the credit crunch and austerity in Western countries, inequality is firmly back at the centre of the public discourse. A new Oxfam report is adding to this conversation, looking at how inequality increases poverty and vulnerability and... Read more

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

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