Africa Forward Initiative (AFI) was featured on WORT FM Madison’s Access Hour program January 13 to raise awareness of the work the organization is doing to end extreme poverty in Africa through entrepreneurship. AFI board member Keahn Gary led a discussion with AFI founder and Executive Director Hezouwe Walada and board member Mary Erickson about the organization’s mission, accomplishments, and goals. Listeners also heard audio recordings from AFI’s Director of Operations Kifatisoa Douti, Secretary Matha Eya, and Field Agent Konipo Payen, who talked about their work on the ground in Africa. Hezouwe began by sharing the inspiring journey that brought him from the village of Koumea in northern Togo to Madison, Wisconsin, describing how a malaria outbreak in his village drove him to become a physician. While working toward his degree in biochemistry, Hezouwe—now a first-year graduate student in UW-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health—established a microloan program for entrepreneurs in his home village to grow self-sustaining businesses, with the repaid loans reinvested into the community to fund additional loans and meet shared community needs such as access to education, health care, food, and clean water. Hezouwe explained how those efforts grew into Africa Forward Initiative, which marked its first year as a formally recognized non-profit organization in the United States in January. He described AFI’s approach to empowering individuals and meeting community needs: providing microloans to entrepreneurs, building a 50-bed clinic to serve an area that has no access to health care, providing school supplies to children in need, distributing food bundles to vulnerable families, and building wells for communities lacking access to clean water. Hezouwe talked about the considerable progress AFI has made in each area, noting that since he began this initiative in Togo more than six years ago, 887 entrepreneurs have been supported by AFI microloans. In addition, three communities now have access to clean water from newly built wells, and the clinic construction is well into phase 2, with the foundation and walls in place. In addition, in 2024, 268 households were provided with food through AFI’s Harvest of Hope program, and 188 children were provided with school supplies through the School for All program. You can listen to the full Access Hour conversation here.

This past holiday season saw 268 families in Togo receive bundles of food through Africa Forward Initiative’s (AFI) second annual Harvest of Hope project. AFI staff members distributed food kits containing staples such as rice, spaghetti, macaroni, cooking oil, and tomatoes in four locations. Those receiving food kits included orphans, widows, and the elderly. In addition to the holiday food drive, AFI distributed similar food kits to 40 villagers celebrating Ramadan earlier in 2024, also through the organization’s Harvest of Hope initiative.. Harvest of Hope is one of three community-solution initiatives championed by AFI in its mission to support African communities living in extreme poverty. These three initiatives work toward alleviating community-shared barriers to economic stability: lack of access to education, lack of adequate food supply, and lack of clean water.