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After leaving university, I hopped on a plane to South Korea, where I set myself up as a freelance journalist, writing for Time, the Economist, and numerous other publications. After a year, I moved to Tokyo with the Daily Telegraph, for whom I covered the Kobe earthquake of 1995 and the nerve-gas attack by an apocalyptic cult on the subway below my office.
I then joined the Economist in London, and after 18 months writing about global health care problems, moved to Johannesburg to become the magazine’s roving Africa correspondent. For seven years, I wrote about conflict, lawlessness and the ingenious ways in which Africans cope with such ills. My aim has been to show how abstract economic ideas affect ordinary people. During my travels to some 30 African countries, I have been shot at, arrested, struck down by nameless bacteria and enchanted by the good humour and hospitality of more people than I have space to mention.
In 2003-4, I won the Queen's English Society's annual award for an account of a ride into the rainforest on a Cameroonian beer truck, the Foreign Press Association's award for "Best Economic Story of the Year" for an article I co-wrote about the causes of civil wars, and the Diageo award for Best Journalist writing about Africa.
I am now the Economist’s Washington correspondent, based in Washington. I am married, with three children.
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