FROM THE PRESIDENT

Last November, I had the chance to do something I don’t get to do nearly often enough: visit one of the communities Develop Africa serves, in person, on the ground.

Develop Africa serves as fiscal sponsor for the Pa Karim Memorial Foundation’s work in Magbaikoli Village, and since I was already in Sierra Leone, it made sense for me, as president of Develop Africa, to go see it for myself. I traveled ahead of time and spent the night in Makeni. The next morning, we made the drive to Magbaikoli.

“Drive” undersells it a little. Magbaikoli is rural in the truest sense — the kind of place you don’t arrive at by accident. You have to want to get there.

Students in Magbaikoli walking the path to school, November 2025

When I arrived, I was met first by the children — boys and girls in blue and white uniforms, genuinely thrilled to see me. Then came the rest of the village. Dancing started almost immediately, and a crowd of residents walked me through their community. They gave me fruit. They showed me the community center. They showed me the health center, which was in very poor condition. And they walked me down to the river.

That’s where I saw the canoe.

It’s a dugout canoe, carved from a single log, and it’s how children cross the river to reach school — several hundred meters of water, with no bridge. I watched kids climb in and out of it like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, because for them, it is. That’s the commute. That’s how you get an education in Magbaikoli.

The dugout canoe students use to cross the river on their way to school

I also saw what the Pa Karim Memorial Foundation had already built before this project even began: solar street lights, installed across the village entirely through the foundation’s own initiative.
And then there was the school itself, under construction. The walls were up to roof level. The windows and doors hadn’t gone in yet. You could see straight through where a classroom would eventually be.

The Junior Secondary School under construction, November 2025

Standing there, I could picture it finished. I could picture kids inside it instead of in that canoe.

What struck me most was the welcome.

The villagers knew I was a partner — someone connected to the funding that made this possible — and they treated me like family. Children wanted to hold my hand as I walked. Adults sang to me in Krio; I didn’t understand all of it, but they taught me a word or two, including “fellow fellow,” which I believe means something close to thank you, or welcome. Either way, I understood the feeling behind it without needing the translation.

I came back from that trip humbled, and honestly, a little undone. What the Pa Karim Memorial Foundation and Endeavour are doing in Magbaikoli is the kind of work that’s easy to describe in a report and almost impossible to fully capture in one. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in that community and the villages around it who have been waiting for exactly this kind of help — and for years, the help that exists in the world hasn’t reliably reached places this remote.

That’s what made the visit feel different. Not that someone wrote a check, but that someone followed through: Gibril and Justice on the ground managing every detail; Endeavour committed to seeing it through; and a community that had the will and the vision but needed a partner willing to go the distance with them — literally and otherwise.

I left with a deep sense of gratitude to Endeavour, to the Pa Karim Memorial Foundation, and to everyone who made this possible. I also carried back the gratitude of an entire village, who asked me to pass along their thanks, their goodwill, and their prayers to the partners and donors who believed in them.

Since This 

The walls I saw at roof level in November are now a finished school. On May 14, 2026, the Mama Gbessay Memorial Junior Secondary School held its ribbon-cutting — and the community broke ground on a Senior Secondary School the very same day. The canoe is still there. But for the first time, it’s no longer the only way to get an education in Magbaikoli.

— Sylvester Renner, President, Develop Africa