Maria and Lwitiko

There was once a girl, growing up in the west of England in a low-income household, whose father was an agricultural labourer. Let’s call her Maria. She had the chance to go to school and become literate, unlike her parents; so did her daughter and granddaughter, who became a teacher.

Many years later there was a boy, growing up in a village of subsistence farmers, who also had the chance of a good education, unlike his parents. He grew up in western Tanzania. Let’s call him Lwitiko.

For both Maria and Lwitiko, the opportunity to go to school transformed the prospects for themselves and their families.

Neither would have had the chance to go to school without the benign intervention of someone from outside their village. This blog is about the impact of such philanthropic endeavour.

A few years before she was born, Maria’s parents and their community suffered a racist attack from a local mob. Theirs was a minority religion and language. Their place of worship was burnt down. A local landowner intervened to rebuild the place of worship and construct a faith-based school for the community, which Maria will have attended.

In Lwitiko’s village, while he was still a young boy, a small group of social entrepreneurs set up a sustainable agricultural project and social program, called Africa Bridge, to boost investment, agricultural output and social care and education. Children were invited to take a leading role in setting the priorities for the program. Lwitiko — or Dr Lwitiko Kadenge Mwalukumba, to give him his full title nowadays, was a gifted child who studied hard and later won a scholarship to study medicine at Durham University in the UK. He says: ‘In 2008 I dreamed of becoming a doctor, however I had struggled even to go to primary school … With the arrival of Africa Bridge, my dream became a reality.’

Maria moved to a city, married a mechanic and had a daughter Ada. Both prized education and by the time her granddaughter Joan was graduating from secondary school, the British government was offering free further education to those intending to become teachers, enabling people from a low-income household to gain further education and enter a profession.

Maria Kenny and Dr Lwitiko Kadenge Mwalukumba are real people, born around 130 years apart. I have a personal connection to both. Lwitiko’s story features in the book that I co-wrote with Africa Bridge’s founder Barry Childs, called And the Children Shall Lead Us, launched this month. Maria is my great grandmother, and her teacher granddaughter is my Mum.

Five years ago a controversy erupted in the UK over the concept of the ‘white saviour’. It was raised by the British MP David Lammy in protest at the widely shared image of a white celebrity philanthropist holding an African child, perpetuating, Mr Lammy MP said, a patronizing image of helpless Africans needing rescue by white saviours.

I agreed with some of what he said, within the framing of the discussion, but there was a missing dimension from the conversations that followed, combined with a shared misunderstanding in much of British society of the nature of extreme poverty and how it can be ended.

Extreme poverty is a misery, and an unending, Kafkaesque nightmare. There is a permanent Catch 22: you do not have the investment to improve your income, and you cannot afford to save for the investment, without improving your income. In practice, it is impossible for communities trapped in severe distress to escape without at least some external agency — a well intentioned benefactor, that may be an individual, private entity or the state. Most people living in extreme poverty do live in sub-Saharan Africa — for all that Mr Lammy correctly points out that there are also thriving businesses and a rising middle class in the continent.

If an initiative to lift a community out of poverty provides a genuine opportunity, such that the program is effective, equitable and sustainable, this is the real test of its worth. It is a test that Africa Bridge passes comfortably, having transformed living standards in 37 villages, and attracting positive attention from local governments in Tanzania with a view to replicating the model more widely.

Without the benign intervention of people with more resources, respectively Barry Childs and the ninth Baron Stafford, the individual who built a school for my great-grandmother, Lwitiko’s family would still be mired in poverty. So would mine.

· And the Children Shall Lead Us, Breakthrough Books April 2024, is available from Amazon in the US and UK and by order through your local bookshop.

· Today, 2 April, is Maria Kenny’s birthday.