Joshua Marikopo

 Today i participated in a consultative meeting for an organisation I volunteer for. Basically, they want to write a localisation policy and are in the process of consulting all partners what they feel about the policy. It got me thinking about how it is actually important that humanitarian players should start thinking and acting from a local point of view. This global change is neccesary. For far too long local communities have been fed with programs, ideologies, resources that do not address their needs because they were not given a voice in deciding what they actually want. So what is localisation? In theory it is involving all local actors at every step of the planning, implementation, monitoring andd evaluation processes of humanitarian work. It is doing everything from a local context taking into consideration the thoughts, beliefs, culture and traditions of local people. This effectively rule out the 'one size fits all' approach which has its own problems.  Localisatio...

                           We all eat food, but the way we eat has a huge impact to the environment and climate change. With the effects of climate change being felt world over, we are at a point where we should be rethinking about a lot of aspects concerning our living and interraction with/on this planet, and food systems is one of those important things.  The food supply chain is huge, from producers (farmers) to every individual who eats food. Food waste occurs anywhere on the supply chain. However, the majority of all food waste occurs in our homes. How? - we purchase food we have no interest in eating, which ends up in the trash. - we cook too much food, most of it is left uneaten and thrown away again. - we do not properly store food, and it perishes easily without having been consumed. Food waste is also occurs in restaurants. We all frequent public eating places, restaurants, street food stalls etc. Thin...

 Zimbabwe's August 2023 elections were questionable. The SADC Zimbabwe's election observation reported noted the many illegalities that surrounded our election process. I was a voter in Harare, and eyewitness to many irregularities that happened on the 23rd of August. The democratic process was flawed and the will of the people was not respected. Zimbabweans now find themselves living in continued poverty and mediocrity. There's poor service delivery in Zimbabwe. There's high corruption, nepotism and political capture within our government institutions. Our roads are bad, fatal accidents are common. Today, a 25 year old musician, Gary Mapanzure died in hospital after being involved in a road accident. What broke my heart is that they were high chances that he could've lived but because there's no government air-medical transportation available. He couldn't be airlifted to Harare for treatment. One also wonders why there's no special treatment facilities ...