Throughout Africa, girls struggle to finish their education. Hundreds of millions of girls, in fact.
Enter CAMFED, a decades-old nonprofit focused on ensuring those girls continue to learn.
The organization’s reach is considerable – since its founding in 1993 by British teacher Ann Cotton, it says it has helped over 7.8 million girls throughout Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and Ghana continue their schooling. Last year, CAMFED also began operating in Kenya.
The need for guidance and assistance doesn’t disappear upon graduation, either. “Even girls who manage to beat the odds and complete their schooling face an abyss when they graduate – a lack of jobs, opportunities and female role models,” CAMFED told the The Story Exchange in an emailed statement.
To combat the myriad hurdles, CAMFED takes a multipronged approach to its work, which is funded by donors and grants. It supports the school-aged girls who are accepted to its flagship program through a mix of financial assistance and critical social connection. Once the girls graduate, they receive career mentoring through its offshoot, the CAMFED Association. The organization also advocates for policy prescriptions to the barriers holding girls back, from all tiers of government.
The impact is tangible. Internal reviews show that girls who received help from CAMFED are three times less likely to drop out of school. And nearly 125,000 girls who saw their education through to completion went on to start businesses – CAMFED estimates that, just between 2020 and 2024, their startups created over 235,000 jobs.
An Intergenerational Network
A significant contingent of the more than 21,000 active mentors, volunteers and leaders powering its peer mentorship program, and the 313,000 individuals who keep the organization going overall, were once the girls that CAMFED kept in school.
Catherine Bato is one such individual. Today, she’s a member of the organization’s development team, and came to the role after completing her primary education – with CAMFED’s help – and then serving as a peer mentor upon her graduation.
Born and raised in the Mwanza district in southern Malawi, Bato recalls the money problems that threatened to hold her back. In 2012, when she first joined up with CAMFED, “my parents could not afford to fund my education, because of some financial difficulties,” Bato told The Story Exchange.
Malumbo Mkandawire grew up in Malawi, too, in the nearby Mzimba District. She graduated from school in 2013 – also with CAMFED’s help – then became involved with the CAMFED Association soon after. Upon earning her degree from EARTH University in Costa Rica, where she learned climate-conscious farming techniques, she returned to work with CAMFED Malawi as an Enterprise Development Programs Officer, while also running her own agriculture business.
None of that would have been possible without CAMFED, she told us – in fact, “at secondary school, I was on the verge of dropping out because of a lack of school necessities.”
Their journeys reflect just some of the barriers that continue to keep girls from their schooling throughout the continent. The problem has worsened since the start of the Covid pandemic, experts say, but the combined struggles of poverty, persistent military conflicts, ongoing child marriage and more have routinely held girls back.
But when steady help is on offer, one can rise above anything, Bato asserts. “What I’ve learned … is that our background doesn’t define us. We are coming from backgrounds where challenges are there that can derail our future – but through resilience and perseverance, we can become whoever we want to be.”
“Through resilience – and also, through the availability of support that is on the ground – one can take action,” Mkandawire says in agreement. “Apart from the influence and confidence and connection we get with our learners and the community at large, the power of sisterhood within CAMFED” is a power all its own. ◼️
