Articles by Maggie Black

Thirty years since the recently re-elected Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni abducted him as a child soldier, Kassim Kiggundu tells his story of suffering, exploitation and betrayal.

2008 is the International Year of Sanitation. Or, asks Maggie Black, is it the International Year of Silence and Embarrassment?

Somalia is the ultimate in ‘imagined communities’, the failed state whose fissiparous character is unique even in today’s splintered world. Situated in the dusty Horn of Africa, this is a country whose Transitional Federal Government (TFG) exists only cour

Somalia: The Untold Story edited by Judith Gardner and Judy El Bushra

Maggie Black talks dirty with a group of sanitation experts in a Chinese hotel and sees a green future for the humble loo.

Dam-resisters watch as their villages flood.

The Sardar Sarovar dam is supposed to end water scarcity in drought-stricken Saurashtra and Kutch. Who is fooling whom? Fifth and final stop.

Does Africa’s transport future lie with the motor vehicle? Maggie Black argues for the combustion engine.

Some of developments most encouraging success stories are relatively small-scale. But they succeed because they involve people and because they are highly practical. MARCUS THOMPSON looks at a project in India and MAGGIE BLACK visits one in Kenya.

Is there any such thing as successful development, and who should define it? MAGGIE BLACK describes the search, details some of the obstacles and comes through breathless but optimistic.

The notion of integrating women into development has become a cliché, monotonously repeated at every international gathering since the 1975 Women’s Conference in Mexico. But what, if anything, does it mean? And what should it mean? By Maggie Black.