Blog posts about attachab

I’ve been struck by the high quality of collaboration demonstrated in the regular UK-Nigeria meetings, so thought I’d say a few words about this in this week’s blog. I’m talking not just about the obvious collaboration of these weekly online meetings between the UK and Nigerian teams - but also the more subtle and equally important collaboration between Pam and her network. Dadamac's relationship with Marcus Simmons of Ecoshelter illustrates this point perfectly. In brief, Pam introduced Marcus to John Dada , which in turn saw Marcus visit Fantsuam last year. Once there, among other achievements, he successfully built an...

Most meals in rural Nigeria are cooked over open wood fires. This is simple and familiar. Traditionally fuel has been cheap and fairly easy to find. However demand for firewood has increased in line with population growth. As trees are cut down the environment suffers from deforestation, soil loss and eventual desertification. There is also increasing awareness of the damage to health caused by wood smoke, especially when cooking takes place indoors. Efficient wood fuel stoves cook food more quickly and use less fuel. So if the stoves can be provided cheaply to local families everyone wins, right? Not quite!...

THIS week's UK/Nigeria meeting provided another fascinating and informative hour, covering subjects as diverse as the training of local Nigerian instructors, crayfish and sms credit! And all this despite an intermittent problem with time delay, which served as a gentle reminder that connectivity is still a considerable problem for most rural communities. What particularly caught my attention was Fantsuam's ability to identify and respond to their communities' local needs. They are concerned, for instance, that their women farmers - comprising of around 1,500 of their microfinance clients - have difficulty affording fertiliser. This of course affects their productivity and ability...