Season’s greetings. I owe you a catch up on what Network for Africa has been up to in these unpredictable times. I also want to thank you again for your support, especially as 2021 has been another challenging year. Thank you to all of you who have donated so generously towards our work. Here are […]

Rhett Butler may not have cared what Scarlett O’Hara thought of him, (“Frankly, my dear…”) but most of us are concerned about how we are seen by the world. Anyone who has lived with an alcoholic knows about putting on a brave face, pretending everything is normal, and dreading the judgment of strangers and friends alike. Grace […]

There’s no business like small business start-ups for getting you back on your feet. That’s the conclusion we’ve reached at our mental health project in northern Uganda. As part of the counselling we give people dealing with trauma and emotional issues, we offer training in setting up a small business. (These are called income-generating or […]

Depending on when you were a child, an adult probably told you to finish your meal because less fortunate children were starving in India, Biafra or Ethiopia. If you grew up in a relatively high-income country as I did, this may have marked the beginning of your awareness that you were comparatively privileged. The scale […]

Until the Covid-19 pandemic, it was difficult to explain the enduring power of superstition in traditional societies to people who live in the Global North. Now, as North Americans and Europeans decline the chance to be vaccinated, we are reminded that people make choices based on misinformation in all parts of the world. In Sierra Leone, […]

The pandemic is tightening its grip on many parts of Africa, and we fear it will be devastating to people’s health and welfare. For this reason, Network for Africa has a simple new project training our clients to start their own vegetable gardens. For £17.00 or $23.23 we can provide seeds and prepare a family […]

Working from home during the pandemic has been a challenge for many people with children, or well-meaning friends and partners who don’t recognise that a closed door is a boundary. Some of us find it hard to concentrate when there are distractions, large or small. The same applies for the Rwandan genocide survivors who attend […]

Thankfully, most of us don’t know. However, many of us have woken from a nightmare at two in the morning and then tried to stay awake for a while, clearing our minds, rather than plunging back to sleep where the nightmare resumes. Yet, this doesn’t come close to capturing the awfulness of repeated flashbacks to […]

Shortly after the devastating civil war in Liberia, I accompanied the inexhaustible President and Mrs Carter (then in their 80s) on an election monitoring mission. I was dispatched to Lower Bong County with a local driver called David. On the way out of bustling Monrovia, we passed hundreds of buildings, schools, homes and offices that […]

My first encounter with Rwanda, back in 2004, would change my life, and it was thanks to the Survivors Fund, known as SURF. When I met the founder, Mary Kayitesi Blewitt, I knew I had found a charity with a clear-sighted, no-frills vision: helping the survivors of the 1994 Rwanda genocide rebuild their lives. There […]