On the road to fight looming hunger

from The Nation

Story by OLIVER MATHENGE

Even as poverty tightens its grip on Africa, a group of eight young people have cycled through half the continent, starting from the north, raising awareness — and money — to help the poor.

For them, the Millennium Development Goals are achievable by 2015 and they will stop at nothing to play their role.

The five men and one woman left Kenya in April for Tanzania where they were joined by two more cyclists after covering 790 kilometres.


In Kenya the group cycled through Moyale, Marsabit, Isiolo, Nanyuki and then Nairobi. From Tanzania the cyclists moved to Malawi and are currently in Zambia. Their cycles will then take them to Botswana and eventually to South Africa.

“We have covered a good portion of our journey, which began on January 5 in Cairo. We will cover a total of 12,500km,” one of the cyclists, Mr Gareth Brauteseth, told the Nation in Kenya.

Social network

South Africans Gareth, Didi Francis (the only woman) and Grant McDermott have teamed up with their Irish friends Niall Treacy, Oliver Fegan and Denis Dwyer for the six-month journey that will take them through nine countries along Africa’s east coast.

The other two, Richard Conyngham and Matt Eb, who joined them in Arusha, are also South Africans. Interestingly, the eight cyclists, all in their 20s and whose background is finance, linked up through the ever-growing social network portal, Facebook.

The fact that their feat is extraordinary and they are all taking such a challenge for the first time, is in the least of their concerns. According to Gareth, Millennium Cycle for Change aims at creating awareness about the work of the Millennium Promise Fund, an organisation that works with impoverished communities to help fight poverty in Africa.

The fund, established by renowned economist and founder of the Earth Institute Jeffrey Sachs, works with the communities, governments, NGOs and corporations. Mr Sachs was an economic adviser to former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

“That is one of the unique aspects of this fund, it is not about handing out money to people. It is about empowering the community through investing in them in partnership with their governments,” Gareth adds.

The overall goal of the Cycle is to raise $300,000 (approximately Sh18.6 million). The funds will go towards the 80 Millennium villages established by the Millennium Promise Fund in 10 countries in Africa.

Twelve of the villages are in Siaya District in Kenya’s Nyanza Province. They include Sauri near Gem constituency, which the team failed to visit due to the post-election violence.

In Tanzania, the team visited the Mbola Millennium village according to an email update from Gareth. The Mbola cluster is composed of six villages with a population of approximately 30,000.

Denis says that they support the Millennium Promise because the Sauri Village had shown remarkable progress and potential. He says that the beneficiaries have managed to improve their output, and reduced malaria prevalence.

“The number of pupils who benefit from the school feeding programme under the fund has increased tremendously in Sauri,” adds Denis noting that 17,514 pupils have been provided with lunch in 28 primary schools in the area.

According to the cyclists, the Millennium villages address all the poverty-related problems, including absence of essential infrastructure to assist communities on their way to self-sustainable development.

“Our aim is to see the millennium development goals achieved where we will have all people being self-reliant,” Gareth says.

According to the cyclist, maize production in Sauri, established in 2004, has more than tripled through the help of inputs such as fertilisers and improved seeds. He also notes that malaria prevalence in the area has gone down from 55 per cent to 13 per cent.

The Millenium Cycle route runs from Egypt along the Nile until Lake Aswan. At that point, the cyclists took a ferry into northern Sudan and continued through the country and into Ethiopia. From there, it was on to Kenya, and then central Tanzania and into Lilongwe on the western side of Lake Malawi.

They will then continue down Livingstone’s way into Victoria Falls, exiting Zambia into Botswana and then into South Africa, where the ‘Garden Route’ will lead them to Cape Town.

“We are hoping to get into Cape Town on July 15,” says Gareth.

Nubian desert

Denis adds that the most challenging parts so far have been in Sudan and Ethiopia.

“It was very hard to cycle though the Nubian desert in Sudan, which took us six days to cover. The other was the Ethiopian Highlands, which has a very tough terrain,” Denis says.