What We Do – theafricatrust

What We Do?

The Africa Trust works towards sustainable solutions to poverty. Our largest programme Water and Sanitation , with over four million beneficiaries to date, provides sustainable access to clean water and decent sanitation. The second largest programme Entrepreneurial Training provides entrepreneurial training and small loans through village savings clubs with over 5,000 more people assisted to start small businesses each year. The Africa Trust has worked with partner organisations in Uganda, Liberia, Kenya and Tanzania past projects , but the main programmes, where all the current work is conducted, are in Zimbabwe and Malawi, where the level of poverty is greatest.

Current Projects

Water and Sanitation

A core strength of The Africa Trust is in establishing sustainable supplies of clean productive water and decent sanitation. The main approach to water supply has been the Elephant Pump programme. Close to a thousand new Elephant Pumps are installed in poor rural villages and schools across Zimbabwe each year. Each one of these pumps can provide clean water for around 300 people with a community-led total sanitation approach used educate all the members of that village on the importance of toilets, rather than open defecation. Long-drop pit-latrine toilets are dug well away from any water source and The Africa Trust provides training along with cement for the construction of toilet slabs. Once a pit is full, the slab can be re-used on a new site and a fruit tree planted on top of the old pit. A lack of clean water and decent sanitation is one of the root causes of poverty in Africa.

The Elephant Pump

The Elephant Pump won the St Andrews Prize for the Environment and special commendation in a video message from King Charles III, who is the patron for this prize. This pump uses locally available materials to lift water from hand dug wells up to 30 metres deep while protecting the water source from any form of contamination. The Elephant Pump is strong and easy to maintain using locally available materials. This is vitally important, as many other aid agencies provide imported pumps that break down and then become useless as they cannot be repaired. Furthermore, the community is educated in techniques for water catchment management planting trees, contouring with lines of grass to improve water re-infiltration when it rains. This has led to increasing yields of water from the Elephant Pumps over the years and decades since the first pumps were installed.

Entrepreneurial Training, With Loans and Village Banks

Entrepreneurial Training has become a major part of the work of The Africa Trust. Each year, around five thousand people are assisted to establish small businesses following training and small start-up loans issued through village savings and loans clubs. These ‘village banks’ are formed by the villagers coming together in small self-selected groups of around twenty people. Loans are repaid to the group with 10% annual interest, and this interest is retained by the group when the loan is repaid. For example, if one village bank receives £2,000 for loans of £100 to each of the twenty members, they would repay those loans within a year. Each person would repay £110 back to the group to make £2,200 but only £2,000 would be returned to The Africa Trust’s local implementing partner. Loan repayment rates have been stable at around 97% with over 40,000 people assisted to date. Although the cost of training cannot be recovered, the loans themselves can be used year after year as a revolving fund.

Past Projects

The Africa Trust seeks to build the capacity of local partner organisations and plans towards an exit strategy wherever possible. There is also an ongoing monitoring and evaluation process to review the comparative impact and value for money of each country programme. Below are some of the past projects that received funding from The Africa Trust over an extended period with some details about what was achieved.

Uganda

In partnership with Living Business Education led by Livingstone Mukasa and his team, The Africa Trust helped to provide employment for over 15,000 people. This was mainly through the entrepreneurial training programme, with a number of one-off projects also supported during the twelve-year collaboration. These projects included: MyWater, a small business, which has helped bring down the cost of clean water in the poorest slum areas around the main cities, a project to help a group of farmers join forces to get better prices for their crops, a project to assist prisoners with business skills training prior to their release, several projects to assist small schools and a large pension programme to increase the financial security of thousands of elderly people where no other safety net exists.

Tanzania

Water and sanitation projects were the main initiatives supported in this country. There was also some entrepreneurial training. A number of gravity-fed water pipeline projects were established and managed to provide plentiful clean water for tens of thousands of people. These pipelines replaced situations where water was being supplied at great expense in lorries, leaving many people unable to buy clean water for their families. The gravity-fed pipelines provide water for free apart from a tiny maintenance fee. This fee is collected by the maintenance committees to do any necessary repairs such as replacing broken taps on stand-pipes. Community-led total sanitation was promoted as part of this initiative.

Kenya

Entrepreneurial training work in villages surrounding Nakuru resulted in many new businesses being established, with and excellent rate of loan repayment. While this work proved successful and impactful, it was decided that the level of poverty was greater in Zimbabwe and Malawi, so resources were transferred to programmes in those countries.

Liberia

This project was commenced after the Chief Executive met with a group former child soldiers from Liberia at the refugee camp called Buduburum near Accra in Ghana. It proved challenging to meet over ninety former child soldiers as a group, so Ian spent three days listening to each of their harrowing accounts of their lives one by one. They were being forcibly removed from the camp and put onto a ship back to Liberia with their shacks in Buduburum demolished and only $50 given to each person to start a new life back in Liberia. This programme was going really badly, as there was no plan for reintegration for people who were often unwelcome back in the communities they had come from due to atrocities they had been forced to commit as children during the war. The Africa Trust trained these former child soldiers how to build toilets so that they could provide a useful service as they returned to their home villages. Some entrepreneurial training and small grants were also provided to assist them in establishing their lives back in Liberia.