Story of a CAMFED Champion: Cycling across Africa

Camfed Champion Sally-Anne Dunn and her Tour d’Afrique teammates

When you envision a champion, what qualities do they possess? At CAMFED, all of our Champions are inspiring and have tenacity, creativity, and most importantly, an unwavering passion for the pursuit of girls’ education and opportunity for women.

These qualities can be found in Sally-Anne Dunn, who recently took part in a “Tour d’Afrique,” cycling alongside a team of 30 from Nairobi to Cape Town in 9 weeks, raising funds for CAMFED along the way. Sally-Anne’s section of the ride equalled just under a whopping 6,500 kilometres (4,000 miles), and the team rode an average of 140 kilometres (87 miles) per day, camping throughout.

The team on a lunch stop

The journey took them through Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. They rode through every condition imaginable: unpredictable weather, rough terrain, smooth tarmac, but best of all, beautiful landscape. Often times, it was difficult to push through the many miles left to go in a given day. Sally-Anne found that her best coping mechanism when things got rough was singing enthusiastically!

With CAMFED’s mission in mind, Sally-Anne also visited schools along the way. Most of the rural schools she visited had several things in common: a limited number of facilities, a lack of basic school materials and electricity, and students carrying their own supply of water to school. Despite these conditions, the team was met with smiling and determined faces, and they exchanged dialogues with the local communities over the value of girls’ education.

Thanks to all the efforts of Sally-Anne and her supporters, more than 67% of her target goal of £6,500 has been raised! She hopes that more will stand behind her in support of CAMFED and of her team’s impressive feat. There’s no doubt in our minds that she is a true CAMFED Champion.

Our featured CAMFED Champion, Sally-Anne Dunn