Self Help Africa
 |
|
| Founded | 1984 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Noel McDonagh Father Owen Lambert |
| Focus | Improving agriculture and food production, promoting entrepreneurship, supporting women, and climate change adaptation |
| Location |
|
| Origins | Dublin, Ireland |
|
Area served
|
Sub-Saharan Africa |
|
Key people
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Raymond Jordan (CEO) Tom Kitt (Chairman) |
| Slogan | "Food and a future" |
| Mission | Self Help Africa works with rural communities to help them improve their farms and their livelihoods. The mission is to empower rural Africa to achieve economic independence. |
| Website | selfhelpafrica.org |
|
Formerly called
|
Self Help Development International; Harvest Help. |
Self Help Africa is an international charity that promotes and implements long-term rural development projects in Africa. Self Help Africa merged with Gorta in July 2014.
The organisation works with rural communities in ten African countries – supporting farm families to grow more and earn more from their produce. Self Help Africa provides training and technical support to assist households to produce more food, diversify their crops and incomes, and access markets for their surplus produce.
The agency also helps rural communities to access micro-finance services, and supports sustainable agricultural solutions that enable rural farmers to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change.
Enterprise development, value-added production, on and off farm diversification, programmes that promote community-seed production, innovation and working with women farmers in Africa are also features of the organisation's development work.
Self Help Africa works with local partners across its African programmes to support the provision of good quality local seed and planting materials. This work includes assistance to local communities to multiply their own seed, and provision of support for rural groups so that they can get certification for the seed that they produce.
Self Help Africa is a recipient of funding from Irish Aid, the European Commission, US AID, the United Kingdom Department of Foreign and Overseas Development (DFID), of variety of trusts, foundations, other institutional donors, and the general public.
The organisation has its headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, UK offices in Shrewsbury, London and American offices in New York and Boston. It operates in Ireland as Gorta-Self Help Africa, and as Self Help Africa in other jurisdictions.
Self Help Africa collaborates with government agencies and local partner NGOs on programmes in Ethiopia, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso. It completed 15 years of development activities in Eritrea in 2011. It began work in its newest programme country - Benin - in 2012, with a programme that is supporting small-scale farmers to access international markets for its cashew crops. In July 2014 the organisation undertook new programme work in Tanzania arising from a merger in Ireland with Gorta.
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Wikipedia