It promises to be an interesting event since unlike last year’s mission to Khartoum, Nyala and El Fashar I will be based in one centre for the week. Also the list of practitioners and speakers is very heavily weighted in favour of the African continent and I think I am the sole European representative. An honour indeed!

I’ve been asked to focus on Missions and Knowledge production. Here’s a taster from the abstract I’ve written for the event:

Missions are one of the key ways any development bank or agency can collect, disseminate and synthesize knowledge but the opportunities to do so are often overlooked or wasted.

Most of the processes are focused on producing a report (back to the office report- BTOR), managing risks and making decisions yet every component can be adjusted and fine-tuned or used in more than one way.

Oh and this time (by way of an example of knowledge transfer from a previous mission) I am going to remember to take nice new shiny dollar bills and not my credit card.