Multi-cultural French, multiple projects

Another week has passed so quickly. I'm now going to French lessons 3 times a week after work. The approach is very academic - lots of grammar and lecturing, not particularly interactive, I'm not sure it’s the best way to improve language skills, but I'm enjoying it nonetheless. The class is like a mini United Nations, we have 2 Senegalese, and then a single rep for Mali, Spain, China, Japan, Mauretania, the Comoros Islands (look it up) and myself from the UK.

On the work front, the projects I'm working on are beginning to come into sharper focus now. The highest priority being a project to review the provision of satellite links within the West Africa region. WFP uses two providers for its satellite communication, which is a vital component of the relief work, since operations are often in locations where there is no 'standard' communication infrastructure (cable, cell phones, wireless etc.). In fact WFP often takes the lead role in providing communication links for the many different agencies involved in relief operations and so having effective, reliable communications is all the more important. One issue at the moment is that the two satellite systems used by WFP do not integrate well with each other, leading to delays and increased cost, so one focus will be to look at how this can be improved. Another project is looking at providing simple back up and disaster recovery solutions for country offices - which often have minimal ICT skills, but still have the need to ensure that their ICT systems are not vulnerable to failure. Altogether there are about 10 identified projects, with a couple of more 'opportunities' suggested to me over the last couple of weeks - so the first task will be to manage this down to a manageable list!