Support an African Community project

We are keen to support promising projects in Africa in whichever way we can. We know that the work of Non-governmental Organisations in Africa and other developing countries is crucial. The main reason is that governments are don't have enough resources and a times are not using public resources responsibly. The end result is that millions are living hand to mouth. Only something special can help break this vicious cycle of poverty.

Currently we support the following community projects:
  1. Kuresoi Community Conservation Association-Contact person; Mr James Kinyanjui
  2. Kitengela Montessori School - Contact persons; Mr. Albert Omari and Mrs. S. Signe Omari

Why is Africa so needy?

Unlike most parts of the world, Africa finds itself in the following unique and dire situation; More than 50%of the population live below the universal poverty line.
  1. Education: Education is not free, parents pay school fees from nursery to the university
  2. Health: There is high cost - sharing policy and the poor can not afford their minimal contribution. There is no National Health and Insurance service. If you have no money to pay for health service, you face imminent death.
  3. Legal representation: There is no free legal representation. Poor people who can not afford legal fees, routinely suffer many set backs.
  4. Labour laws: Labour laws are weak so workers are underpaid and suffer from intimidation and job insecurity.
  5. Consumer protection: There are poor consumer protection mechanism.
  6. Lack of security:The number of police personnel and resources is so low such that criminals are able to out-manoeuvre the security system at will.
If you would like to help these organisations, please fill this form and the editor will send you their contacts.

Some background information

Africa is a continent endowed with rich and diverse natural resources. Good weather, good soils, rare wild life and other resources present a very good scope for agricultural, industrial and tourism development. The leading industry in Africa is Agriculture. Except for the Horticultural sector, there has never been an effective and sustainable growth in the true sense of entrepreneurial culture, to enable the agricultural sector shift from subsistence to competitive industrial growth. Over - reliance on this sector has placed a large number of the African population in difficult circumstances.

Notwithstanding the abundance of the natural resources, alluded to above, Africa remains an afflicted continent. The forlorn picture that hunger and political instability that Africa presents can't be to blamed on local situation per se. There are other international and local factors whose interplay has resulted in this sorry state.

For instance, lack of meaningful domestic and direct foreign investment has stagnated economic growth due to low tax collection base. This by extension means that the governments have less money from taxes, hence they can not create reliable infrastructure especially energy generation, good communications (telephony, roads, railways and air transport) which would spur industrial growth, create employment and expand tax collection. So this vicious cycle goes on and on

African governments' failure to curb corruption and public sector red tape has not helped the situation. More and more money is being spent on bloated civil service. The situation is made worse when top government officers continue squandering resources on unproductive expenditure such as expensive cars, luxuriant trips abroad, undeserved allowances. Generally, official misuse of public funds by the privileged costs billions of dollars each year. This is the money that would, otherwise help develop this continent.

On the other hand, unresponsive global trade regimes have robbed the poor hard working Africans a chance to improve their lives. The failure by multi-lateral organisations, such as the G7 and the WTO, to support african farmers by cutting down subsidies in the developed countries has made African produce less competitive in the global market. To aggravate the situation, most countries, notably Europe and the USA, continue with taxation regimes (discouraging the developing world from exporting finished and processed agricultural produce in particular) that make it impossible for African farmers to enter their domestic market.