Self Help Africa is an international charity that promotes and implements long term rural development projects in Africa.
The organisation works with rural communities in eight 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. [1].
The agency also helps rural communities to access micro-finance services, and helps rural farmers to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change .[2].
Enterprise development, value-added production, on and off farm diversification, and working with women farmers in Africa are also a feature of the organisation's development work.
Self Help Africa collaborates with government agencies and local partner NGOs in Ethiopia, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Ghana, Togo, and Burkina Faso. It completed 15 years of development activities in Eritrea in 2011. The agency has its headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, UK offices in Shrewsbury, and in New York.
Self Help Africa was established in mid-2008 following a merger between Irish agency Self Help Development International and the UK agency Harvest Help - both of which were set up in the wake of African famines in the mid-1980's. Both agencies had worked for nearly 25 years, seeking long term solutions to the problem of famine and food insecurity in Sub-Sahara.
It is the recipient of funding from Irish Aid, the European Commission, from US AID, the United Kingdom Department of Foreign and Overseas Development (DFID), and from a variety of trusts, foundations, other institutional donors, and the general public.
Self Help has won several awards for its website, including an Irish Golden Spider for 'Best Charity Web Site' in 2004, and an Annual Digital Media Award 'Best Information Web-Site' in 2007.[3]
In November 2009 Self Help Africa was formally launched in the United States by former Irish President and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson.
In 2009 the organisation collaborated with international development agencies Concern Universal, Find Your Feet, Development Fund of Norway and FARM-Africa to publish 'Climate Frontline - African Communities Adapting to Survive', which was launched in Dublin by Irish Environment Minister John Gormley, at the EU in Brussels, in London, and in several African capitals. The publication sought to lend a voice to rural Africa, and show how the rural poor were already adapting to survive in a changing climate. The launches were arranged in advance of the COP 15 summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen.
In 2011 a campaign 'Change Her Life' [4]. was mounted by Self Help Africa that sought to lobby funding agencies and donors to provide a fair share of existing support to Africa's women farmers. The campaign argued that while Africa's women farmers do as much as 80% of the work, they receive as little ast 5-10% of the support that is available - including farm advice, seed, land and access to markets. A petition to support the campaign attracted 5,000 signatures.
A promotional video produced by Self Help Africa "It starts with a seed" was selected by Bill Gates as the Best Video entry in The Gates Foundation "Answering the Challenge" competition that was held in 2011. [5]