African Development Foundation

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Former ADF Grantee Wangari Maathai Wins 2004 Nobel Peace Prize

 

Wangari Maathai Wins 2004 Nobel Peace Prize
Wangari Maathai, the founder of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement and a former ADF grantee, has been awarded the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for a career devoted to community-based environmental action and for her advocacy of peaceful mobilization for democratic change in sub-Saharan Africa.

In a October 8 statement, ADF President Nathaniel Fields praised Maathai for her decades-long commitment to organizing broad-based environmental conservation efforts.

Mr. Fields’s statement read:

“The African Development Foundation (ADF) today joins the people of Kenya and people around the world in congratulating Ms. Wangari Maathai on receiving the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. It is a tremendous and well-deserved recognition that speaks to Ms. Maathai’s remarkable achievements as leader of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement (GBM)....Ms. Maathai’s Nobel Peace Prize highlights the powerful role that women-led grassroots organizations across Africa and the developing world have played, and continue to play, in building broad-based foundations for prosperity, democracy and peace in the 21st century”

Ms. Maathai was the first east African woman to complete a Ph.D., earning her doctorate in 1964. She taught biological sciences at Jomo Kenyatta University in Kenya through the late 1970s, when she began working with low-income Kenyan women to establish local chapters of GBM in rural and suburban communities suffering the effects of advanced deforestation.

In 1985, GBM received one of ADF’s first grants, an award of US $58,475 that helped GBM finance the participation of 100 rural Kenyan women participate in Kenya's Non-Governmental Organization Forum. ADF funds also provided GBM with resources to produce a detailed documentary on the history of Kenya's struggles with deforestation and GBM’s efforts to organize local, community-led reforestation projects. That documentary, "The Naked Earth," was released in 1986 and was used as an outreach tool in GBM’s successful campaign to create community-based reforestation groups across sub-Saharan Africa.

Godisa Solar Hearing Aids Wins International
Botswana grantee Godisa Solar Hearing Aids recently won a South African Design Excellence Award from the South African Bureau of Standards in recognition of Godisa’s achievements in setting new global standards for the design and production of solar chargers for hearing aids.

Godisa’s solar charger was recognized for its performance, its ergonomic design, its positive environmental impact and its low cost.

Located in Otse, Botswana, Godisa produces hearing aids and solar chargers that are marketed and sold in the developing world, Europe and North America as a sustainable, low-maintenance, low-cost alternative to hearing aids powered by disposable batteries or electricity. Whereas most hearing aids cost about US $600 to maintain over a five year period, Godisa’s solar-charged hearing aid costs only $75 over the same period.

Ten of Godisa’s 14 full-time employees are either deaf, hearing disabled or physically challenged, and the trust is one of only a handful of enterprises in Botswana that invests in the training of deaf and disabled workers. ADF’s grant to Godisa has helped the trust triple its annual production and train its disabled staff in essential production, quality-control and business-management skills.

At the award ceremony in South Africa, one of Godisa’s deaf workers made a 15-minute presentation on the trust in sign language.

For more information on Godisa and its solar-powered hearing aid, go to www.godisa.org.
 

 

DDI Director Wins British Chevening Award
Adamu Garba, the director of ADF’s Nigeria partner organization, Diamond Development Initiatives (DDI) of Kano, has been awarded a fellowship by the British Chevening Programme to study methods for facilitating rural participatory development at the Centre for International Development and Training of thr University of Wolverhampton.

The Chevening Scholarship Programme is funded by Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office and administered by the British Council. One of the primary goals of the program is to help future leaders in the developing world receive the training they need so that they can play a more active and informed role in their home country’s social and economic growth.

Mr. Garba thanked the British Council in Nigeria for its recognition of his work and said, “I feel greatly honored as a recipient of the British Chevening Award. I see it as recognition of my work and my potential. I also see it as recognition of the work of Diamond Development Initiatives through our partnership with the African Development Foundation. I look forward to acquiring additional skills and knowledge in the UK. I will also use the opportunity to reassess DDI's organizational strategy so that we can improve our service delivery and reposition DDI for challenges ahead.”

For more information on DDI, go to www.ddinigeria.org.
 

Mon Petit Benin Honored for Successes in Marketing and Job Creation
Mon Petit Benin (MPB), an ADF small- and medium-enterprise (SME) grantee based in Cotonou, Benin, was recently invited to a regional conference sponsored by the African Union and the International Labor Organization to share lessons from its success in generating jobs for low-income residents of Cotonou. MPB was also profiled by Benin’s TV-5 in a documentary series that highlights the country’s emerging small businesses.

A woman-owned and managed small enterprise, MPB is tapping into Benin’s growing market for processed natural fruit chips and bottled natural fruit drinks. It produces a wide-range of products, including banana, plantain, potato, mango and bread fruit chips, and a popular line of pureed fruit and vegetable drinks that are sold widely in local supermarkets and kiosks in southern Benin.

ADF’s grant to Mon Petit Benin is helping the company acquire the production space, production equipment and working capital it needs to further expand its output and sales across the Cotonou and Porto Novo consumer markets. It is expected that MPB’s production and sales will quadruple over the five-year span of the project, and that this growth will allow MPB to expand its workforce while raising the average salaries of its employees to more than three times Benin’s current national average for per capita income.

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