Network for Africa salutes First Lady Rosalynn Carter who has died at the age of 96. Four decades ago, when it was not socially acceptable to discuss mental illness, Mrs Carter was a relentless champion for better mental health services. When her husband was in the White House, Mrs Carter was the force behind the Mental Health […]

The United States’ founding fathers were on to something in 1776 when they declared life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to be inalienable rights. Yet, it is still rare to find any reference to people’s emotional state (“happiness”) in more recently drafted bills of rights, constitutions or legal conventions. More typical is a catalogue of things […]

“When you decide to do a project in a foreign country, where do you begin?” we are asked. “We look for a local partner,” we respond. “But how do you know who to trust?” It’s A Good Question People who wish to support our work are right to have concerns that we might be deceived […]

A simple idea we began in our Uganda projects has been so successful that we are now hoping to replicate it in Sierra Leone. What Is The Problem We Are Trying To Fix? Even before the Ukraine war pushed up grain prices, 26% of children in Sierra Leone had high levels of stunted growth because of malnutrition. Since Russia […]

When Network for Africa set out to provide mental health support in northern Uganda, we had a specific goal: we wanted to train local people to give trauma counselling to survivors of the devastating civil war. It quickly became clear that no matter how successful we were in helping people to manage their trauma, we also needed to reach […]

Trying to quantify emotions can be a tricky business, like nailing an omelette to a wall. How do you measure happiness or gloom? Doctors ask us to choose a number between one and ten to express our physical pain. But how do you calculate fear or anxiety? For this reason, Network for Africa is always […]

In the global north, amputation is usually a result of accidents or diabetes. But in Sierra Leone, rebel soldiers used it as a weapon of terror, punishing the civilian population during the country’s civil war. It left an estimated 27,000 people (out of a population of 5.1 million) as amputees. Even twenty years later, victims […]

You might curse those emails and texts that pile up like dirty dishes when you are trying to focus on something else. Zoom meetings may feel as intimate as chatting with aliens in a distant galaxy. But during the pandemic, when travel to Africa was impossible, Network for Africa’s team was grateful it could stay in daily contact […]

During the pandemic, our Network for Africa team kept in daily contact with our African partners by zoom, text and email. But it was only in October 2022 that our CEO, Annabel Harris, was able to pay in in-person visit to see our project in northern Uganda. Mental health issues can affect anyone, anywhere, no matter their […]

On one of my early trips to Rwanda, in 2006, I took a group of friends to see our projects, hoping they would support our work. We visited a remote rural village in the company of our long-time local partners, SURF. We were introduced to a middle-aged woman who had horrific scars on her neck and face from […]