Blogs

Today, April 7th, 2025, is World Health Day and marks the launch of a year-long campaign on maternal and newborn health. Titled Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures, the campaign calls on governments and the global health community to intensify efforts to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths and to prioritize women’s long-term health and well-being. At […]

For International Womxn’s Day we take the opportunity to critically reflect on the climate crisis and its intersection with gender. We use an intersectional feminist approach to highlight the relational nature of power, which dictates how climate crises and gender equality are being framed, and how that affects the solutions proposed to combat climate change. […]

Have you ever heard of schistosomiasis? Probably not. Half of the population in Tanzania is affected by this parasitic disease that can lead to severe health problems. KIT epidemiologists Jake Mathewson and Ente Rood are working together with Dr. Humphrey Mazigo, a Professor of Public Health, from the Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences […]

Amartya Sen, the renowned Indian philosopher, economist and Nobel laureate, published his book, Development as Freedom, in 1999.  In this masterpiece he articulates a vision for development out of poverty that goes beyond basic income and describes the process of development as the need to provide choices for people.  The concept of freedom is foundational […]

You may think of tuberculosis (TB) as a deadly infection of the past, yet it remains one of the leading causes of mortality in many countries today. While TB exists in every part of the world, 80% of cases and deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. Epidemiologists at KIT Institute have spent over a […]

In a speech delivered at the launch of the Feminist Edge alumni network, a professional development program for gender trainers at KIT Institute, Arturo Escobar invited us to recognise care as the foundation of life and therefore, as central to systemic radical social change. In today’s fast-paced world, where productivity and progress often overshadow the […]

While many organisations aim to use Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) for learning, they tend to prioritise accountability goals based on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to meet donor requirements. However, in complex development projects, traditional KPIs fall short to capture the fluid and unpredictable nature of system transformations. In this blog, we argue that adaptive management—an […]

Laura Cala Vergel, PMEL analyst with Share-Net Columbia, shares her experiences attending this year’s programme. The Feminist Edge programme offers a holistic training between pedagogical concepts and practices, providing participants with key tools to strengthen their work as gender trainers. The course has been a transformative experience that has allowed me to deepen my knowledge […]

From 9 to 14 June, KIT Institute, as a Knowledge Management partner for the Land-at-Scale (LAS) programme, participated in the annual LAS Exchange event which this year took place in Uganda. Equitable and sustainable land governance is essential to achieving sustainable development and has a key role to play in strategies for sustainable livelihoods, food […]

Why direct transfers are a better strategy for value redistribution in the cocoa sector. by Rob Kuijpers, Ruerd Ruben, and Rik Habraken. Increasing cocoa prices above market equilibrium is an expensive way to achieve living incomes for farm households. Besides excessive monetary costs, higher prices may have unintended adverse effects, such as on child labour […]

“At KIT we see participatory research that directly feeds into evidence-informed lobby and advocacy as a win-win. It allows researchers and advocates to jointly broaden our perspectives and helps lobby and advocacy to focus on actions with the biggest potential for change.” (Pam Baatsen, Senior SRHR advisor at KIT) In our role as knowledge partner […]

In contrast to commercial banks, whose primary focus lies in financial services for profitability, development banks finance projects that contribute to societal progress. In this article, Dr Nicola Francesconi, a senior economist at KIT Institute, makes the case for adopting more rigorous impact evaluation techniques within development banks. These techniques would allow us to truly […]

Senior epidemiologist Mirjam Bakker was in Pakistan for the start of a new research project and visited a chest camp. She sent us a dispatch from Islamabad. From 26 to 31 January I travelled to Islamabad in Pakistan to prepare and join the 2-day kick-off and protocol development workshop of an exciting new research project with the objective to develop innovative active case finding (ACF) approaches to optimise […]

Our colleagues Nicola Francesconi, Lisa de Graaf, Boudy van Schagen, Coen Buvelot, and Sandra Quintero were in South Sudan from the 17 to 21 February for the annual A3SEED project retreat. They sent us their dispatch from Juba. Since 2021, KIT Institute has collaborated with IFDC on the A3-SEED project (Accelerating Agriculture and Agribusiness) in […]

The Ministry of Health of Rwanda is making great strides in their fight against Tuberculosis. In their efforts to further reduce the burden of TB, the Rwanda Biomedical Center (BRC), with support from KIT Institute, has implemented a MATCH analysis to identify areas where TB case finding within Key and Vulnerable Populations (KVP) will need […]

Our SRHR advisors Hannah Kabelka and Marielle Le Mat are currently in Kenya, collaborating with national partners to kick off a new study. They have sent us their dispatch from Nairobi. We are in Twanthanju, Tharaka North, where we have observed an intergenerational dialogue facilitated by the Break Free! Kenya consortium. This community in Tharaka is experiencing high rates of teenage pregnancy, early marriage, and chini ya maji (under the water) […]

Chantale Al-Lakis, Epidemiologist at KIT Institute, sent us this dispatch from Abidjan. She was recently in the port city with other KIT advisors (below) to deliver a workshop on the World Bank and Global Financing Facility-funded project on Service Delivery Redesign for Maternal and Neonatal Health in Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Niger, and Pakistan. Comprehensive […]

KIT Institute’s Managing Director, Mayada El-Zoghbi, recently visited Rwanda, where she met our partner AKADEMIYA2063 2063. She sent us this dispatch from Kigali. In it she talks about the trends she observed and the people she met during her brief visit to the country also known as the ‘Land of a Thousand Hills’. I’ve been on […]

Knowledge is power and, for now, knowledge is dominated by the richest countries. Thus Dutch magazine Vice Versa writes in its report on the Power of Knowledge conference; Kennis dekoloniseren is pijnlijk en nodig (Decolonising knowledge is painful and necessary). The annual Power of Knowledge conference is the latest initiative to bring together professionals concerned with […]

Thirty students sponsored by the Kenniscentrum Global Health joined the Power of Knowledge event on 1 September 2022. They were all asked to share their reflections on the event; of which five were chosen and published. Creating equitable partnerships The main goal of the event was to examine how the North-South paradigm shapes the flow […]

In Italian, ‘Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi .‘ In the lead up the Power of Knowledge event, Sandra Alba, Senior Epidemiologist at KIT, grapples with what redressing the power imbalances in knowledge exchange means to her and why it’s vital we address this issue now. This famous Italian saying comes […]

As a public health professional who has written several peer-reviewed articles, Dr. Oti is very vocal about the power imbalances that plague the practice of global health. He has spoken at many events about decolonizing knowledge. Before he travels to Amsterdam from Nairobi, Kenya, he speaks to us about why he considers it important to […]