Africa 2026 Trip Report
East Africa Visit Report
Kenya, Malawi and Zambia — June 2026
The Austin Bailey Foundation currently has eight three-year International Flagship projects, mainly in Africa, running from 2025 to 2027. We aim to visit a number of these projects during the course of the three-year period.
This report covers the visit to Kenya, Malawi and Zambia in June 2026 by ABF’s three overseas trustees: Clive Bailey, Chairman; Adam Leach, an independent consultant and former Oxfam adviser; and the Rev Steven Bunting. We visited six of our current Flagship projects, plus one small-grant recipient. Over the three-year period, we will have given a total of £94,000 to these seven projects.
15 June 2026 — Hospice Care Kenya
We were looked after by Emily and Ted from ONPACC — Ongatongong Palliative Care Community, a community-based organisation sponsored by Hospice Care Kenya and funded by the Austin Bailey Foundation.
When a disabled child is born in the communities we visited, all too often the following vicious circle can occur:
Stigma is attached to the child. The mother may be seen as cursed, while no blame is attached to the father.
The child is hidden at home and the family tries to deny its existence.
The husband may move out and take a new wife, ignoring responsibility for his disabled child.
If the child needs full-time care, the mother cannot work. A vicious circle of poverty and mental health problems can follow.
Hospice Care Kenya and ONPACC, supported by the Austin Bailey Foundation, try to break this vicious circle. Their first priority is to encourage the mother not to hide her child and to make the child’s needs a community issue. They encourage the father to share responsibility for the child. Where he does not, community volunteers enable the mother to have time to earn some money, for example by collecting firewood or making jewellery. All too often, conditions such as autism and cerebral palsy are lifelong and cannot be cured.
In Western countries, many such conditions would be identified at an early stage and support or treatment provided. In remote African villages, however, families may live many miles from healthcare, which can itself be unaffordable, leaving them with very limited options.
Without community support, women can descend into a cycle of poverty and depression. Community support helps them challenge the idea of a “curse” associated with the disabled child and enables them to feel that their difficulties are shared within the community.
In many cases, the community organisations are staffed by women who have themselves been through similar experiences.
Here are some examples we saw:
Kai Tei — 22 years old, with autism and cerebral palsy, resulting in stiff hands and limbs. He cannot speak, feed himself or walk. His mother has experienced depression and sometimes leaves him unattended. The community organisation does what it can to support her.
Joy — 11 years old, with cerebral palsy. Her father has left. Nancy, her grandmother, looks after Joy much of the time, allowing Penina, her mother, to act as a volunteer for Hospice Care Kenya as well as running a small jewellery business.
Israel — a 30-month-old baby who is half the weight expected for his age. He has signs of malnutrition but little desire to eat. He cannot sit up or support himself, so needs constant care. The family cannot afford diagnostic tests at the hospital in Nairobi. The Austin Bailey Foundation will fund these tests and we hope they will identify a treatable cause. Meanwhile, his sister, also in the photograph, is a bright girl whose ambition is to become a doctor.
16 June 2026 — Sand Dams, Kenya
We met Cornelius Manteka, Titus, Austin and Elizabeth from Sand Dams Africa at Upper Syunident village in Kenya.
A village resident commented: “The river used to pass us by on its journey to the Indian Ocean. Its banks were arid and we gained little from it. Thanks to the sand dam, it has brought us previously unimagined prosperity.”
Sand dam technology is simple: a concrete dam is built across a seasonal river. During the wet season, water and sand collect behind it. The sand stores the water below the surface, helping to prevent evaporation and reducing mosquito breeding.
While the technology is relatively simple, the thinking behind its implementation is what makes the difference. This is not a development project imposed on a questioning community by a distant NGO. The villagers themselves jointly decided that they would benefit from a sand dam and approached Sand Dams Africa. Sand Dams Africa provides the surveyors, designers and steelwork, while the villagers provide labour, raw materials and sand. Villagers who participated in the work are entitled to water for irrigating their crops. Those who did not participate receive drinking water only — still a huge benefit, as previously they had to walk up to 5 km to the nearest well.
The villagers therefore have ownership of the project and take great pride in an achievement that they imagined, planned and helped to create. The three parties involved were:
The village community
Sand Dams Africa
The Austin Bailey Foundation, which funded about 60% of the cost of this dam as one of our Flagship projects.
Agricultural productivity is up by 30–40%. Surplus crops are sold in the market, creating a cash income that can help pay for children’s education and other household needs. The quality of the diet has improved as a greater variety of crops has been introduced. The community is justly proud of what it has achieved.
This village dam is one of more than 800 such projects that Sand Dams Africa has built over the last 20 years; it is currently adding about 65 a year. A sand dam costs between $25,000 and $40,000 and benefits 600–1,200 people.
Sand Dams Africa is an impressive organisation bringing real benefits to people in semi-arid parts of Africa. We will follow its work closely in future.
17 June 2026 — Pump Aid/Beyond Water, Malawi
We have supported Pump Aid, known as Beyond Water in Malawi, since 2018. Our current reduced grant runs until the end of 2026. Pump Aid has developed considerable expertise in the delivery and, more importantly, the maintenance of pumps, mainly for domestic use.
It faces a number of challenges, the greatest of which is Malawi’s falling water table, set against a rising population. Around 40% of pumps are inoperable in Malawi due to maintenance issues. Pump Aid/Beyond Water’s initial model of selling pumps to communities, which we saw in 2019, had changed to an emphasis on maintenance and maintenance contracts by the time of our visit in 2023. Today, it has stopped installing pumps altogether and specialises in pump maintenance, while also focusing on consultancy work for NGOs that provide pumps free of charge.
They showed us a number of new developments, the most impressive of which is a solar pump installed in the village of Nduwa. The capital cost was paid by a Scottish NGO, while Pump Aid/Beyond Water was responsible for installation and maintenance. The advantages of solar are greater reliability and the ability to deliver much larger volumes of water to areas previously unsuitable for a hand pump. The capital cost, at about $100,000, is 10–12 times that of a hand pump. Where the capital cost is borne by an overseas NGO, solar is likely to be the preferred system.
Rainwater harvesting is another current focus, with run-off water collected during the rainy season and stored in tanks.
Pump maintenance remains their core activity, but we were concerned to learn that the number of mechanics has more than halved since 2023.
Overall, Pump Aid/Beyond Water remains a major specialist in domestic water delivery in Malawi, but its model has had to evolve in the face of NGOs willing to donate pumps free of charge. This, however, opens a much bigger market for maintenance contracts and specialist consultancy to large NGOs and donors.
18 June 2026 — Find Your Feet, Malawi
This was an unscheduled visit. A Kenya Airways flight change gave us an extra day in Malawi, so we decided to visit Find Your Feet, which recently received a small grant from ABF. It is not a Flagship project.
Find Your Feet is led by Melina Mtonga. Unlike Pump Aid and Tiyeni, it works across many sectors in Malawi: agriculture, microfinance, agricultural marketing, education, governance, gender and humanitarian work. The total cost of its five current projects is $8.0 million over several years. What is impressive is that it depends on its UK parent charity for only about 20% of its funds. The rest is generated in Malawi from overseas donors. We see this as a possible future trend, with African charities increasingly raising funds themselves in the face of the disappearance of US aid and declining European aid.
Its largest current project is in education, providing tablet computers to thousands of schoolchildren in 37 schools. Unsurprisingly, these are very popular and have resulted in improved school performance, particularly in IT, and much higher school attendance.
Like many charities in Africa, Find Your Feet has been hit very badly by the ending of US aid, which has reduced the number of current projects from twelve to five and staff numbers from 95 to 52.
Interestingly, it is starting to work with Tiyeni on joint projects combining Tiyeni’s DBF methods with Find Your Feet’s marketing and route-to-market strategies. Such cooperation is being promoted by the Malawi Government. We had a joint session with Tiyeni and discussed the possibility of a joint Tiyeni/Find Your Feet — and perhaps Temwa — application for the 2027 Flagship round.
19 June 2026 — Tiyeni, Malawi
Tiyeni is a long-standing ABF Flagship recipient:
£24,000 — 2019 to 2021
£12,000 — 2022 to 2023
£6,000 — 2025 to 2026
Total: £42,000 since 2019
Tiyeni’s DBF (Deep Bed Farming) technique results in phenomenal improvements in yields. To sustain a family, a farmer needs 36 bags of maize per acre per annum. Without DBF, the average yield is about this figure; with DBF, it is over 80 bags. Surplus production is sold in the market and gives families a cash income that can be invested in educating their children or improving their homes. We took a risk by backing Tiyeni from the start, when it was a very small charity with income of about £200,000 per annum, but our investment has paid off royally.
CEO Isaac Chavula is moving into a consultancy role in July, and Fanny Nkunika takes over as CEO on 1 July.
Tiyeni has now received Malawi Government backing, which opens doors in many ways. Its work is included as part of the state school curriculum, and ABF has paid for its DBF training handbook and brochure to be translated into three local languages. Government backing means that many other local NGOs are seeking to adopt the DBF method and are using Tiyeni for training. It has also resulted in enquiries from other countries. Tiyeni will shortly start a trial project in Mozambique.
Tiyeni is expanding its livestock scheme, under which a goat or pig is given to a village — 1,500 animals to date — and offspring must be passed on to other villagers. The community decides who receives the animals. Diets are varied, manure helps crop production and surplus products are sold into the cash economy. Recipients must be DBF adopters. Ownership is documented to prevent disputes.
Like many other charities in Africa, Tiyeni is finding the present climate very challenging. Its goal is to eliminate food insecurity in Malawi, but its scale remains small: 37,000 farmers have adopted the method out of 4.7 million farmers in Malawi, less than 1%. If its activities could be scaled up in a meaningful way, this could result in a huge improvement in Malawian living standards in a country where 40% of farmers are food-insecure.
Tiyeni’s DBF method is proven. Its biggest challenges are scaling up and fundraising. Income has been erratic over recent years. With this in mind, it has opened a Tiyeni USA branch which, if managed properly, could result in substantially increased income. The local board has been strengthened and will face the fundraising challenges. We have suggested that Tiyeni develop a long-term fundraising strategy.
In conclusion, Tiyeni’s DBF method is a proven success, but the scale of its adoption remains very low. Its biggest priority is to raise substantially more funding in order to extend the method to more of the 99% of Malawi’s farmers not yet familiar with it.
22 June 2026 — Temwa, Malawi
We are supporting Temwa with a grant of £27,000 over three years in Nkhata Bay North for its SRHR (Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights) project, in an area officially designated as “hard to reach”. It is also a hard-to-reach issue, given the stigma surrounding sexual behaviour. Temwa’s other activities include agriculture, which ABF has supported in the past, health, WASH and education.
We met Emmanuel Njico and the SRHR team at their offices in Mzuzu. The project aims to provide sexual and reproductive health information, advice, testing and materials to young people at schools and youth clubs. It is targeting 30,000 young people over a three-year period and has currently, in Year 2, reached 17,000. Young people want access to information about subjects that people are often embarrassed to discuss. Discussion groups cover many topics, including:
Teenage pregnancies
Child marriage
HIV
Violence
STDs
Menstrual services
Sexual rights
Condom distribution
Testing
Family planning services
Gay sexual activities have not yet been broached.
The main avenue is through schools: SRHR clubs have been set up in 28 schools and 30 youth clubs so far. Every club has a matron who can give advice. There are four health centres where family-planning materials and condoms are distributed and testing is carried out.
Initially, the programme encountered some hostility from parents because of the sexual-health theme. Involving parents in the discussion enabled Temwa to overcome such objections in nearly all cases.
The total cost of the SRHR project is £120,000. The Mercury Phoenix Trust is the largest donor, with ABF the second largest.
We travelled to the village of Bula, 90 minutes each way on rough roads, to see the SRHR club at the secondary school. We were greeted by about 30 pupils who spoke confidently about the club’s activities, which, in addition to SRHR, include:
Sports
Vegetable gardening
Entrepreneurship training
A greenhouse project
A tuck shop
The young people clearly take pride in the project and demonstrated it with enthusiasm.
We also visited the Buka clinic, which delivers youth-friendly services and advice, as well as the youth club. The following day, we went to Honga Primary School, for pupils aged 10 and over, to see its similar youth club SRHR programme. Outcomes are impressive: there were six teenage pregnancies in the year before the programme; that has dropped to zero. Likewise, school dropouts have reduced from 24 to eight.
Temwa is an impressive organisation, making a real difference in Malawi. Results from this sensitive SRHR programme are very positive and it has been enthusiastically embraced by the young people who are its beneficiaries. We will follow Temwa closely in future.
24 June 2026 — Village Water/ECHO, Zambia
We met Mubiana, Country Director for ECHO, a Zambian NGO set up and supported by Village Water. We have provided a Flagship grant of £27,000 over three years to help grow water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure and impact in Zambia.
Mubiana explained how ECHO has successfully implemented a pilot programme supported by Uptime/Safe Manzi and the Government of Zambia. It adopts a results-based approach to funding and currently covers 101 water points in schools and clinics. Payment is made for monitoring water points to ensure a continuous supply of reliable, clean water through effective operations and maintenance. Repairs must be carried out within 72 hours so that there is no need to find unsatisfactory alternative sources. The programme also provides inspection of water and sanitation infrastructure — including pumps, pipes, taps and latrines — and water-quality testing.
ECHO has built up an invaluable data set covering all aspects of water and sanitation services. This provides accurate and comprehensive information about the supply of water services and the gaps in provision that need to be filled as quickly as possible. The data can also be updated regularly using information collected locally.
In the future, other private-sector organisations will bid for the full roll-out of this pilot programme.
Mumbwa — 25 June 2026
We met the project team, including Queen (DWP), Simosi Shalala (Just a Drop), Abraham (Uptime/Safe Manzi) and Dickson, a volunteer intern water engineer for the Uptime programme. They cover five districts around Mumbwa in Central Province. There is another team in Nalolo, also in Central Province, covering a further six districts. Both teams are supported by specialists from the Lusaka office, who provide support including environmental work, monitoring and evaluation.
Programmes include WASH, livelihoods and environmental protection/climate change. All three are integrated. Livelihoods work includes water troughs for cattle, borehole protection for health and hygiene, and small-scale food production. Environmental protection is mainly concerned with CO2 reduction through citrus-tree planting, supporting soil conservation and water retention.
WASH activities include water supply for public institutions and communities; resilient latrine design to provide affordable household sanitation, currently in Nalolo rather than Mumbwa; and hygiene education, including menstrual hygiene, through school WASH clubs. Trainers and facilitators help communities set goals, provide education and address the supply of essential items such as reusable sanitary pads.
Coordination is important. ECHO is closely connected with other organisations involved in ensuring that local communities receive improved and reliable water and WASH services through the District Wide Plan. Coordination is carried out through the District WASH Education Committee, which meets quarterly and establishes partnerships to avoid duplication and overlap.
WASH activities started in 2022 with a district baseline survey, followed by activities from 2023. Since then, more than 15 boreholes have been drilled and four rehabilitated. ECHO supports the maintenance of hand pumps, which serve up to 500 people, and water-reticulation systems using storage tanks and pipes, which serve more than 500 people. Basic maintenance is provided through Area Pump Maintenance personnel (APMs), who regularly check and repair pumps and train pump caretakers in basic mechanics.
ECHO works with Village WASH committees to coordinate water management, check pump performance and facilitate fee payments for operations and maintenance. Fees collected by community groups are 50p to £1 per household per month.
We visited recently installed hand pumps in Mupondo and Mwenandoba villages and met APMs and members of the Village WASH committees. They described improvements in water supply, the quality of potable water and the availability of water for crop production. They are also able to maintain the pumps and call for support when needed. They described improvements in health and hygiene as well.
As a striking contrast, we also saw several unprotected wells in more remote locations from which unsafe water is drawn.
ECHO, with others, is guided by and closely monitoring progress towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG 6, which aims for universal access to basic water services. With four years remaining, they are confident that the water-access goal can be achieved; sanitation and hygiene will depend on adequate finance and changes in household attitudes and behaviour.
We came away with a strong impression of the real improvements in water access for many people around Mumbwa, confidence in the systems designed to ensure reliable supplies, extensive support for WASH, health and livelihoods in the communities, and an elaborate network of government and other agencies working to achieve lasting improvements. ECHO is proving to be a vital component of many crucial aspects of this local action.
Summary
All seven charities visited gave us an enthusiastic welcome, were proud of their work and achievements, and were grateful to ABF for our support. We left with many wonderful memories. Two stand out in particular.
The first is the transformation of the Upper Syunident village economy in Kenya through the construction of a sand dam. The initiative came from the villagers themselves, assisted by Sand Dams Africa. The villagers supplied much of the labour and materials and therefore feel ownership and pride in the improved living standards they have achieved.
The second is the young people of Bula school in Northern Malawi who, with Temwa’s guidance, are operating a thriving youth club that includes an SRHR (Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights) programme. Despite the sensitive nature of the subject, they talk about it with enthusiasm, take pride in it and take ownership of their achievements, which include dramatic reductions in teenage pregnancies and school absenteeism.
There is another factor affecting nearly all charities in Africa: the sudden cutting of US aid, along with cuts from many European countries, including the UK. This has been a major shock, especially given the suddenness of the decisions. Programmes have had to be slashed or drastically reduced, and the loss of local jobs is a further economic and social shock.
In the longer term, some good could come from this if opportunities grow for local charities to raise a larger proportion of their own funds. This could make them less dependent on overseas government donors or overseas parent charities. Ultimately, this should reduce dependence and improve sustainability.