Program

Cape Town, the place where Thumbs Up Africa finishes, is the starting point of the Afrikan Hiphop Caravan, a caravan that crosses Africa from South to North to show how music and art creates transformation. The caravan will visit six cities to 'celebrate inspirational radical underground hiphop culture' and thereby raise a creative alternative voice to the analysis of outsiders of how to 'fix' Africa. Click here to read and see more.

"The illegal trafficking of wildlife now ranks as the 3rd largest criminal industry in the world. IAPF warriors effectively fight poaching and safeguard elephants, rhinos and other endangered wildlife - and you can help." Neda, Sierd, and Christiaan did. They joined the 'warriors' of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation on their mission to stop rhino hunters on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. Click here to read and see more.

The cotton industry is essential for Zambia: With around 200,000 cotton farmers and an estimated one million dependents, it has become the country’s largest quasi-formal distribution network. This important agricultural sector relies almost solely on the bigger grower/ginning companies, who give the farmers a loan to produce and deduct this loan from the amount they pay for seed cotton subsequently produced by the farmers. Click here to read and see more.

Camera, lights, action!

Kilimanjaro Film Institute (KFI) is an audiovisual training institute based in Arusha, where Tanzanian youth from a poor background are educated to become film and television programs makers. Click here to read and see more.

Safe water and sanitation are basics for life, we can agree on that. But who is going to provide the money to realize this basic need for everyone? That question is successfully tackled on the local level by UFUNDIKO, a small organization in the middle of Tanzania. UFUNDIKO, under coordination of its innovative Somalian founder Mussa, has built up a growing revolving fund system that enabled hundreds of households to invest in safe and improved latrines using locally available materials and knowledge. Click here to read and see more.

After the rough road from Ethiopia through northern Kenya, the hitchhikers arrived in the green hills of Kenya’s Central Province, where they visited the Ndumberi Coffee Farmers Cooperative Society (NCFCS). This cooperative is home to 2000 active members, 1300 of whom are women, with three factories. Click here to read and see more.

Nairobi hosts some of the most innovative new energy initiatives in East-Africa, among which the Kenya National Domestic Biogas Program (KENDBIP). KENDBIP aims for promotion, dissemination and adoption of the domestic biogas technology as a local alternative sustainable energy source through the development of a commercially viable, market-oriented biogas sector. Click here to read and see more.

Whether you are in the cities or on the countryside of Ethiopia, children are helping out their parents and making small money to provide for food and other basics. To protect child rights, the Stop Child Labour campaign was initiated by our partner Hivos. The hitchhikers had a look at the work of two Ethiopian organizations that are part of this campaign. Click here to read and see more.

One of the biggest challenges in a country that is recovering from war is that the thousands, sometimes millions, of people who have lost their houses, their jobs, their families and more have to find their place in ‘normal life’ again. The International Organization of Migration (IOM) assist refugees to build up their lives and their country again. Click here to read and see more.

Women’s rights are high on the agenda in Egyptian society – unfortunately mainly among women in the (urban) North of the country. How can we bring women’s rights under the attention of a larger audience? How do we reach the people that cannot read and write? And how can we get both men and women to discuss the alternatives? Click here to read and see more.

Cairo is home to many important feminist activists. The hitchhikers met up with Raghda El-Halawany, awardwinning journalist and women’s rights activist currently active at the head office of MasterPeace. They discussed with her what issues women are dealing with in Egypt and what needs to be done in her view to establish change: everybody needs to get involved! Click here to read and see more.