Tackling Energy Poverty

Mambo Elimu - Tanzania

Focus Area: Education

Partner: Education Development Center (EDC)

Donor: Lifeline Energy US Ambassador Tom Hanks

Beneficiaries: Children, Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children

Project Launched: 2005

Tanzania is a poor country where an estimated five million school age children have little or no access to primary education. An estimated 4.7 million are involved in economic activity and 300,000 children are engaged in the worst forms of child labour.

Providing access to high quality, relevant education is the best way to eliminate child labour. Since completion of a successful pilot programme in 2003, we have distributed more than 2,300 Lifeline radios in Tanzania to support Mambo Elimu, which means ‘education is everything’ in Swahili. Mambo Elimu is a distance learning radio initiative developed by Education Development Center (EDC).

Broadcast over the national radio station network, Mambo Elimu provides basic education to children aged 10-17. But children out of school, especially orphans, need more than literacy and numeracy, so programmes also include segments on AIDS prevention, nutrition, hygiene, gardening, and other practical survival skills. Mambo Elimu has been an unqualified success and children learning from Mambo Elimu with a Lifeline radio score better marks than children in formal schools and in half the time.

A grant from the Vodafone Group Foundation funded the first 300 Lifeline radios to ensure children in the most remote areas had access to a good education. Thanks to the generosity of readers during The Times Christmas Appeal in 2005 a further 1,000 Lifeline radios were distributed in Tanzania along with a further gift of 100 Lifeline radios donated by the US Oswald Family Foundation and GlobalGiving. Our US Ambassador and two-time Academy Award winner, Tom Hanks, also made a major donation which funded a further 1,000 Lifeline radios for Mambo Elimu.

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