I was in the bath one day, when I realised I was destined for greatness…
Another day, another headache (…and another cliché).
If there’s one thing working here will teach you, its how to be proactive. If you sit around hoping that some interesting and important work will fall into your lap, you’ll wind up twiddling your thumbs more often than not.
We had our meeting with our donors yesterday, and I as I predicted, we met with a fair bit of resistance to our proposals. It must be said that some of the objections were reasonable, most boiling down to ‘he would one day fly must first learn to stand and walk’ (and yes, that’s Nietzsche by way of Coming to America – you can’t accuse me of being highbrow). Our titular response was plagiarised from this Joker.
In seriousness, though, it is true that we’ve never had any system for capturing even annual donor inflows effectively, so our drive to monitor on a monthly basis does seem to be a bit sudden. We have our reasons, though.
Firstly, the reality of the situation we’re in is that to hit IMF targets we need to monitor what happens in the economy each month. We need to know in the middle of a financial quarter that our project grants aren’t coming in as expected so we can start to try and resolve this before we miss our quarterly target.
Secondly, we have momentum on this now. A new director, people in key posts within government who get along with each other, people in key posts in donor agencies who are capable and helpful; the fear is that if we move too slowly this favourable confluence of circumstance will dissipate.
We explained all of this to our donor group, and though they have reservations, we made a few compromises and reached broad agreement about what we can request, by when and from whom. We were all in agreement that all of this needs to be driven by the Ministry of Finance, and key decisions should rest with our Director. Hopefully a system of sorts will be running by mid February, which we can refine in the run up to the 2006/07 budget.
Which brings us to my comment about being proactive. Having helped to clear a path on this work, I suddenly realised that since this was resolved faster than I expected, I’ll soon have no active projects or assignments on. To forestall this, I spent the afternoon I made a list of all of the things the division still needs to do in the next six months, starting with the formulation of a Debt and Aid policy. I’m having a meeting with my boss tomorrow morning, after which I’ll run all of this by the Director and hopefully a couple of these projects will get of the ground soon.
* * *
The Africa Cup of Nations is starting to hot up. After yesterdays cracking 1-0 between Nigeria and Ghana, I watched the Ivory Coast beat Libya. The Ivorian team is physically imposing and technically adept, with a few players who are clearly ready for a move to major European clubs, not least Didier Zakora and Yaya Toure. What really surprised me, though, was the flair with which Libya undertook their infrequent forays forwards. I’ve not seen so many accurate backheels and flicks since Jay-Jay Okocha seared himself into my consciousness in the 1998 World Cup.
It’s also refreshing to listen to commentary that doesn’t refer to every piece of poor defending as ‘naïve’. In fact, the giants of African football, teams like the Ivory Coast, boast of defences as reliable as they come. To take just two examples, the Ivorians feature Kolo Toure and Marc Zoro of Messina and Ghana’s defence is marshalled by Sammy Kuffour, a bit past his best, but on his day still impassable.
* * *
I may not be able to Ramble next week as it might take a bit of time to get my internet connection sorted out when I move into my house. If I don’t turn up, don’t fret; I’ll be back soon after that.
Tionana.
If there’s one thing working here will teach you, its how to be proactive. If you sit around hoping that some interesting and important work will fall into your lap, you’ll wind up twiddling your thumbs more often than not.
We had our meeting with our donors yesterday, and I as I predicted, we met with a fair bit of resistance to our proposals. It must be said that some of the objections were reasonable, most boiling down to ‘he would one day fly must first learn to stand and walk’ (and yes, that’s Nietzsche by way of Coming to America – you can’t accuse me of being highbrow). Our titular response was plagiarised from this Joker.
In seriousness, though, it is true that we’ve never had any system for capturing even annual donor inflows effectively, so our drive to monitor on a monthly basis does seem to be a bit sudden. We have our reasons, though.
Firstly, the reality of the situation we’re in is that to hit IMF targets we need to monitor what happens in the economy each month. We need to know in the middle of a financial quarter that our project grants aren’t coming in as expected so we can start to try and resolve this before we miss our quarterly target.
Secondly, we have momentum on this now. A new director, people in key posts within government who get along with each other, people in key posts in donor agencies who are capable and helpful; the fear is that if we move too slowly this favourable confluence of circumstance will dissipate.
We explained all of this to our donor group, and though they have reservations, we made a few compromises and reached broad agreement about what we can request, by when and from whom. We were all in agreement that all of this needs to be driven by the Ministry of Finance, and key decisions should rest with our Director. Hopefully a system of sorts will be running by mid February, which we can refine in the run up to the 2006/07 budget.
Which brings us to my comment about being proactive. Having helped to clear a path on this work, I suddenly realised that since this was resolved faster than I expected, I’ll soon have no active projects or assignments on. To forestall this, I spent the afternoon I made a list of all of the things the division still needs to do in the next six months, starting with the formulation of a Debt and Aid policy. I’m having a meeting with my boss tomorrow morning, after which I’ll run all of this by the Director and hopefully a couple of these projects will get of the ground soon.
* * *
The Africa Cup of Nations is starting to hot up. After yesterdays cracking 1-0 between Nigeria and Ghana, I watched the Ivory Coast beat Libya. The Ivorian team is physically imposing and technically adept, with a few players who are clearly ready for a move to major European clubs, not least Didier Zakora and Yaya Toure. What really surprised me, though, was the flair with which Libya undertook their infrequent forays forwards. I’ve not seen so many accurate backheels and flicks since Jay-Jay Okocha seared himself into my consciousness in the 1998 World Cup.
It’s also refreshing to listen to commentary that doesn’t refer to every piece of poor defending as ‘naïve’. In fact, the giants of African football, teams like the Ivory Coast, boast of defences as reliable as they come. To take just two examples, the Ivorians feature Kolo Toure and Marc Zoro of Messina and Ghana’s defence is marshalled by Sammy Kuffour, a bit past his best, but on his day still impassable.
* * *
I may not be able to Ramble next week as it might take a bit of time to get my internet connection sorted out when I move into my house. If I don’t turn up, don’t fret; I’ll be back soon after that.
Tionana.
posted by the Maradona of Malawi at 6:25 PM
