I am a fan of "dressing how you feel" philosophy. To me the way I dress may determine my efficiency, the air around me and how everything else goes around me. Generally Africa has  warm to very hot climatic conditions and to me it makes no sense at all why I should be in suit and necktie in October in my office with no AC! It generally affects my efficiency and am not at my best otherwise! We copied most stuff from the Britons blindly without checking why they do so. In England its generally cold and what they call summer can sometimes pass for winter in Malawi! That is why they are usually in suits and neckties, do we really need that here throughout the year? At the World Bank in D.C. they actually have a period when they allow staff to dress down because its too humid and they understand the laws of effciency. They actually make an announcement to that effect. But not here! Ofcourse am generally not a fun of suits and ties and all the formal attire etc.

In Seychelles because they have generally warm weather throughout the year, you rarely see someone in a suit. Actually the President the other day was making a National Address while in a flowerly and brightly coloured beach shirt! Yes! Sometimes one tends to think computer science and journalism was a better option...but even them here they are well indoctrinated in the same! So to my peers with ambitions to become President one of these days and you happen to consider yours truly for the post of Chief Secretary of Government...well let me warn you, my first task will be changing the dress code in Government! Yes I will mess up your Government! So there you have it, be warned!     

Well Southern Africa has experienced a very funny weather pattern this year! I mean normally the cold season, sometimes called winter is from around May to July bt what we saw in 2011 is really remarkable! Winter extending well into October, this is the time we expect the sun to be at its best causing serious heat concerns! I know for sure in Malawi and Zambia and elsewhere also they have had this funny pattern. Well the heat is not always very welcome and the cold weather can be properly shielded as the cold is not as cold as the North usually is.

This weather pattern also saw the latter days of October being unusually cold and then come early November was like an oven! Then 2 weeks later the heat seems to be subsiding! This is a good weather pattern I think. I can accept to have a 3 week intense heat and then comes the rain and we continue with the other weather patterns. Because southern Africa can sometimes experience intense heat and its unconfortable! Well the dynamics of this has to be looked into really! Countries have to monitor the times they do several things like farming etc!  

Now the mention of Rwanda brings back the memories of the 1994 Genocide when about 1,000,000 people were killed in 100 days! Well while the rest of the world is still fascinated about this ordeal, the Rwandese themselves are fast moving on and leaving the bitter memories behind and forging development.

Apart from the nice construction work and reconciliatory initiatives taking place in this tiny mountain also known as a Land of a Thousand Mountains, I noted that there is some sense of urgency, something like trying to catch up with the rest of the world. The Civil Service retired most older members and the Government Corridors are filled with young people full of enthusiasm and dire need to make things better for the country.

There are however two initiatives that fascinated me…one is the “Umuganda” which literary translates to “Contribution”…this is a monthly National Day of Service and it falls on every last Saturday of the month. From 7 am to 12 noon the country comes to a standstill, no public transport, offices and shops closed and everyone takes to work like tidying up the streets, cutting grass and bushes etc. Although an article on allafrica.com makes some suggestions on how to improve the Monthly day of service, it however generally agrees that this creates a sense of community and responsibility in the minds of the Rwandese as they work together. I asked one young man the question that I had been hesitating to ask… “what is your tribe, Hutu or Tusti” he responded… “am Rwandan” came the answer…no further questions from me…I knew what he meant. You would be penalized for making tribal references.

One other thing that caught my attention is the banning of plastic bags. Yes you cannot carry your shopping in a plastic bag, it is illegal, you can get arrested! I had brought some items from my country for a Rwandese friend of mine nicely out in a plastic bag. We had to rush to the nearest shop to get a brown bag!  No wonder their streets are clean and rid of paper. This reminded me of a sea of blue plastics I saw in the beautiful Lower shire District of Chikwawa in my Country Malawi just a short distance from the office of the District Commissioner.  That was a couple weeks ago while with a team from the World Bank.  These plastics are causing a mess apart from polluting, they form bad garbage…garbage that never rots! May be we can borrow a leaf from Rwanda…I know the plastic paper making industry is thriving in Malawi…there is always a trade off though.

Oh and I was privileged to reside at The Hotel Des Mille Collines, yes the Hotel in the hit movie Hotel Rwanda.

The second edition of the Bergen Summer Research School to be held during August 2009 will be dedicated to the theme of Climate, Environment and Energy.

We aim to provide a portfolio of courses and activities addressing environmental and climate change from all disciplinary perspectives. The 2009 theme will intersect with the other key topics of the Bergen Summer Research School: global poverty, health, and norms, values, language and culture. A particular emphasis will be held on the human and social dimensions of climate change, questions related to economics, water and food supply and availability, biodiversity, health, human security and ethical questions, including debating global and national responsibilities.

It is now well established that the global climate is changing due to human activities, in particular related to burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. These activities are tightly linked to socioeconomic and political models that have transferred advanced economies to their current state of development. As a consequence, both observations and climate models show large-scale changes in major weather patterns, increased frequency of extreme weather events, and in the state of the global ocean and cryosphere systems. These changes pose new pressures to ecosystems worldwide and lead to progressive and crucial challenges for socio-economic, health and political structures and trans-national relations, as well as to new relations between humans and their environment. In particular, challenges are expected in the crossing between global development challenges, poverty and vulnerability, food availability and security, health, availability of water and climate change. These challenges will lead to increased migration, increased refugee flow, and humanitarian crises affecting the mobility of large numbers of people with immediate and direct consequences for advanced economies.

Rich and healthy nations may have the capacity to adapt and mitigate such climate change-related changes but they also have an undeniable responsibility to better understand and predict the above-mentioned crossing issues. Such a responsibility includes not only the facing of serious moral dilemmas related to the fact that human induced climate change is primarily driven by economic activity and resource use that had historically benefited them, but a responsibility to propose pro-active measures driven by cross-disciplinary research and thus the production of new knowledge. In particular, new knowledge is needed to potentially mitigate negative consequences on people in developing parts of the word as well as vulnerable and disadvantaged groups within advanced societies. These people, in general, are not responsible for the ongoing global warming and have little resources and capacity to mitigate and adapt to the undeniable changes that will come. All countries, advanced as well as less and developing economies, have an obligation to protect future generations, the environment and ecosystems. For a rich, petroleum-producing and highly engaged donor country like Norway, such issues and ethical dilemmas have particular importance and call for special responsibilities, including the responsibility to produce new knowledge.

Our 2009 Program will offer disciplinary, interdisciplinary and problem oriented doctoral courses and plenary events aimed at sharing current research in the Bergen milieu and to produce new holistic approaches on the environment and climate change in relations to global the other key themes, global poverty, global health, and norms, values, culture and language.

Souce: Global Development Challenge.