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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...

President of Maldives Mohamed Nasheed is one of the most outspoken spokespersons on the immediate need to end the climate impasse (over caps on carbon emissions) between the developed West and emerging countries like China and India. He believes that climate is now becoming a security than an environmental issue. Nasheed is more worried than other heads of states since he fears (based on predictions by scientists) that his island nation might cease to exist owing to rise in sea levels triggered by climate change. In an article published in The New York Times just a month after he got...

It has been a record haul for women at the Nobel prizes this year. But more heartening for me was the Nobel for economics going to a political scientist, who has worked painstakingly to show that privatising natural resources is not the answer for stemming environmental degradation. US-based Elinor Ostrom’s studies have challenged established economic thinking that natural resources can either be owned by the State or the private sector. They have shown that fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and groundwater basins can be managed better as common resources by communities. I don’t know who should celebrate more for this...

Today, bloggers world wide are thinking about climate change as part of blog action day - and I am reminded of a conversation I had with a security man one dark night on a compound in rural Nigeria. I was admiring the stars. He was surprised. I explained that here in the UK I live on a main road; I need thick curtains in the bedroom to keep out the street lighting; light pollution hides all but the brightest of stars. He said he had previously met an American woman, also admiring the stars. She had said something similar but...

Things are getting very busy here, and it is hard to share it all as much as I would like to do. I hope that (once more of Dadamac's activities have "moved in" to this single online space that is dadamac.net ) life will get simpler and it will be easier for everyone to know what is going on. A couple of years ago I hardly ever went to any face to face events connected with my Dadamac interests (back before Dadamac developed out of Cawdnet). I simply worked away online - or went on working holidays to Africa. Now...