Drinking water across large areas of the East African Rift Valley, from Tanzania though Kenya and Ethiopia, contains excessive fluoride. In low concentrations fluoride has beneficial effects on teeth, but prolonged consumption of high-fluoride water leads to mottling and weakening of teeth, and even serious deformation of bone structure. Children are particularly susceptible.
Because fluoride has no taste, and because it is a chronic... Read more
In Turkana many communities have required significant external support during previous droughts, to ensure critical dry season water points remain functional to minimise loss of life - of both people and animals.
Diesel systems are capable of very high output, but their fuel consumption means very high operational costs too. In droughts they might need to operate for 18 hours a day to keep people and animals alive. But the Catch-22 is... Read more
The urban sanitation challenge is huge.Worldwide, 2.6 billion people lack access to sanitation. In the informal urban settlements in Nairobi, Kenya, several million people have limited access to hygienic, safe or dignified ways to relieve themselves.
An Oxfam study in two settlements in 2011 found that most households spent 10% or more of their monthly income to go to pay-for toilets. Mostly these are pit latrines and they are often... Read more
Go to almost any rural area in Kenya and chances are you won't have to drive around for long to find a broken handpump. Whatever the make there's always a reason why it wasn't possible to fix - lack of funds, no spares, spares but no tools, technician was trained but left village, "We're waiting for the agency that installed it to come and fix it," etc, etc.
Pumps break, it's normal - isn't it?... Read more
"In the night time it is very beneficial to have the phone, we can help pregnant women in labour on time."
Seng Chanthou is a female commune councillor (FCC) from the Treal Commune in the Baray district, central Cambodia. She is just one of the 45 women who received pink mobile phones as part of the Digital Vision Small Grant Development Programme. And helping to deliver babies is just one of the surprising ways in which... Read more
As someone who grew up in Bangalore, I have seen my city undergo a startling transformation, from the Pensioners Paradise to the Silicon Valley of India. I am almost a pensioner myself now - I started writing this blog on my 60th birthday. Sometimes I feel stupefied and amazed by the changes - but I can't feel old: not with so much energy all around me. And from what I see, I feel truly optimistic about the new India, and in particular,... Read more
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
Digital campaigning's growing influence over policymakers means that it is rapidly rising up the political agenda. Petitions on issues as wide-ranging as Steven Hestor's bonus, to the selloff of national forests, have made full use of social media advances. It is the biggest innovation in campaigning since the introduction of television advertising in the early 1990s. Given the success these campaigns have seen, it is natural to talk... Read more
Imagine you have lost everything, except what you could carry, as floods engulfed your home. In the short term how do you survive and in the long term how are you going to rebuild your life? Floodaid was a spontaneous social networking website created amid this scenario.
Floodaid was conceived in just 12 hours in response to widespread flooding in Queensland this year. According to the Floodaid website, the aim was to create... Read more
When I first took up my post in innovation in Oxfam a kind soul left me a bottle of 'Super Bubbles' on my desk as a welcome present. This conjures up a familiar cultural assumption about innovation: good ideas spring upon us. We cry 'Eureka!', leap out of our baths, pad down dripping to the laboratory (which we always heroically occupy on our own) and an invention is born!
This excellent video by Kirby Ferguson is a compelling... Read more