Africa helping Africa

On the flight from Nairobi to Lilongwe. I'm sitting with Ahmed - an accountant for a Sierra Leone- based charity. 

He and his colleagues help remote villages in Malawi build simple safe wells. (A safe well must be capped or have a substantial raised rim, to stop unclean material from polluting the water.) 

His team also works with villagers to plant crops by providing the inputs (seed, fertilizer), in return for a proportion of the crop at harvest time. This share they sell in order to be able to invest in the next year's plantin - a simple pattern they then encourage and train the village leaders to do themselves.

(Examples of wells built by Ahmed's team. These are in Sierra Leone. He didn't have pictures of the wells in Malawi on his phone.)

I asked Ahmed why he works to help another country in Africa when his own country of Sierra Leone is very poor. "I am Muslim. In Islam, when we help others this delights God so much. And I never ask anyone about their religion. We treat everyone the same. I feel so happy when I am able to help."

" We always include training with our giving. It's no good to just give things. Tomorrow when it runs out, what will happen then?"

And Ahmed, why are you travelling to Malawi yourself?

"It's important for me to see exactly where the money is going, and to validate the work. I'm coming to watch what's really happening."

We're coming in to land.

"This is different. In Sierra Leone, everything is green."