Writing
8 of 8 pieces. Commentary, reflection, and field notes on evaluation, global health, and the climate-conflict-food-insecurity nexus.
- 2025The Evaluation Gap: Why Development Programmes Fail to Prove Their WorthBillions flow into development programming each year, yet fewer than one in five programmes undergoes a rigorous impact evaluation. The consequence is not merely academic. Without credible evidence of what works, funders recycle failed approaches, practitioners lose institutional memory, and the communities these programmes claim to serve bear the cost of well-intentioned guesswork. Closing this gap requires more than technical fixes. It demands a fundamental shift in how organisations value and invest in evaluation from the outset.Commentary
- 2025Building PRAXIS: An AI Skill for Programme EvaluationWhy I built an open-source evaluation methodologist and how it draws on 12 years of field experience.Open Source
- 2025Evidence in Fragile Settings: Lessons from a Decade of Field EvaluationWorking across South Sudan, Burundi, and the Sahel has taught me that the most valuable evaluations are not necessarily the most methodologically sophisticated ones. They are the ones designed with enough pragmatism to survive first contact with the field. In displacement camps where baseline data is scarce and programme timelines shift with each security incident, the evaluator who insists on textbook designs will produce nothing at all. What follows are the principles I have come to rely on when the conditions on the ground refuse to cooperate with the evaluation plan.Reflection
- 2024When Data Meets Context: The Case for Mixed Methods in Global HealthQuantitative data tells us that a nutrition programme reduced stunting by 12 percentage points. It cannot tell us why mothers in one district trusted the community health workers while those in the neighbouring district did not. That second question often matters more for scale-up. Mixed methods research bridges this gap, not by compromising on rigour, but by recognising that different questions require different forms of evidence. My experience designing evaluations across six countries has consistently reinforced this principle.Analysis
- 2024COP28 Sparks Urgency Amid Climate Funding ShortfallHow multilateral organisations should finance climate adaptation and mitigation to combat the harms of climate change.Think Global Health (CFR)
- 2023Rethinking Nutrition Surveillance in Conflict ZonesStandard nutrition surveillance relies on assumptions that collapse in active conflict: stable populations, accessible sampling frames, and the luxury of repeat measurement. In South Sudan, I watched SMART surveys become meaningless within weeks of completion as populations shifted and food access changed overnight. The field needs surveillance systems that are designed for instability from the start, not peacetime tools awkwardly adapted for war.Field Note
- 2022Climate Change, Food Insecurity and Violent Extremism in the SahelReflections on the nexus under the new political dynamics in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.GCERF
- 2017Making Every Baby CountA reflection on the Helping Babies Breathe Program and strategies to reduce birth asphyxia in sub-Saharan Africa.Editorial