
About Us
Mothers of Africa is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation established in 2004 by Professor Judith Hall, a doctor at Cardiff University, Wales, UK. The charity addresses the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Working in sub Saharan Africa we try to improve women's health, reduce maternal deaths and build schools so girls and boys have better lives, out of poverty, through education.
Although the risk of death in childbirth has dropped by 34% between 2000 and 2020, (from 451,000 deaths in 2000 to 287,000 deaths in 2020), women in sub-Saharan Africa face the highest lifetime risk of dying in childbirth (1 in 41), which is approximately 268 times higher than in Western Europe (1 in 11,000). (https://data.unicef.org/topic/maternal-health/maternal-mortality/)
Since inception Mothers of Africa has delivered training programmes to doctors and nurses in many African countries including Liberia, Benin, Togo, Tanzania and Zambia.
In 2012 the charity started working in Zambia, in Chongwe Hospital and the near-by Shiyala Village. Shiyala is a community of subsistence farmers, centered on a health post and had only a derelict community school run by untrained volunteer teachers. In a short time, the relationship between charity and village grew and Judith realised that improving the education of the village children could make a huge contribution to the charity's objectives. She said: "I recognised that the girls running around this patch of land had no education, and were the girls who were going to die".
In 2013, a small group of supporters in Monaco became actively involved in running education programs in Zambia, including helping with adult literacy and numeracy. To help and support the aims and objectives of the UK charity Mothers of Africa Monaco Association was officially established in December 2017.
In 2016 the charity set about working with the village and with two social enterprise architecture companies, Orkidstudio (now BuildX Studio and Caukin Studio
We have built and equipped a nursery and a primary school in Shiyala Village as well as extra classrooms in a nearby school, Evergreen. After these builds had been approved by the state, we handed them over to the Zambian educational authorities, thus making the donation sustainable.
Shiyala now has a government-adopted school with nine classrooms, trained professional Zambian teachers recruited by and paid by the Zambian State, and space for over 500 primary school learners, and 60 pre school learners.
At Shiyala we have, in addition to building the primary school and nursery school:
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Built a teachers’ Office and landscaped the school
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Provided 60 treble desks and teachers desks
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Donated over 2,000 story books and loads of pencil cases (full of pens/ pencils etc
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Provided holiday schools for the children at Shiyala
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Worked with students from Cardiff University and throughout the globe to deliver the new buildings
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Built 4 much needed new classrooms at Evergreen School Zambia (a neighbouring school to Shiyala)
In 2021 we started funding an important project in Chongwe to end period poverty. This provides adolescent girls with sanitary products to enable them to meet their hygiene needs and manage their periods with dignity. We fund a team of volunteers who sew and deliver the sanitary products and visit the schools regularly to deliver the products and to educate the girls in how to use them sustainably.
With Professor Hall now based in Namibia, we now work in this country as well as in Zambia. In 2023 we started supporting Nurses education in Northern Namibia which is ongoing.
Our latest Namibian project is to help fund Hope Village in Windhoek (https://hopevillagenamibia.org). Hope supports vulnerable children, especially orphans affected by HIV/AIDS, by providing safe homes, education, healthcare, and emotional care. Through partnerships, sustainability projects, and dedicated staff, it empowers children to overcome adversity and build better futures, fostering hope and breaking cycles of poverty and neglect.
Mothers of Africa in Wales was wound up in March 2025, with Professor Hall remaining on the Committee Mothers of Africa Monaco, and Dr Sunil Dasari and Dr Job Mwanza, formerly MoA Wales trustees, coming on to the committee in Monaco.