Legendary South African adventurer Kingsley Holgate and his family have re-entered South Africa after 427 days of circumnavigating the African continent.
The Holgates and a group of volunteers embarked on a humanitarian circumnavigation of Africa, on the 27th of April 2007 from Cape Town.
The Outside Edge Expedition has seen the team travel in three Land Rovers through 33 countries including Namibia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Mozambique.
The expedition will be complete when they arrive at Cape Point in July.
The primary humanitarian objective of the expedition has been to hand out mosquito nets to malaria-vulnerable communities living along the continent’s coastline.
According to the World Health Organisation’s Global Malaria Programme, there are at least 300 million acute cases of malaria each year globally, resulting in more than a million deaths. Around 90% of these deaths occur in Africa, mostly in young children.
“We use our expedition Land Rovers as mobile clinics to distribute educational material, anti-malarial products and insecticide-impregnated nets,” says Holgate.
Holgate, who has himself been infected with malaria, has used the expedition as an opportunity to urge African leaders to adopt serious malaria prevention programmes. Since the journey began in South Africa, Holgate has carried a Scroll of Peace and Goodwill to every country the team has visited. Politicians, community and business leaders have all been encouraged to add their names to the scroll as a show of solidarity in the fight against malaria.
The first two signatures on the scroll were those of Nobel Laureates Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Other humanitarian campaigns undertaken by the Outside Edge team have been the Right to Sight campaign aimed at distributing reading glasses to poorly sighted members of rural communities and the Teaching on the Edge campaign which has delivered books and other educational materials to schools in Africa.
The team’s arrival in South Africa was marked by the handover of a ‘library’ to Ncemaneni Primary School in rural KwaZulu Natal on Saturday, reports the South African Press Agency.
Holgate, who is considered one of Africa’s greatest present day adventurers, has completed a number of expeditions with his family, including journeys up the East Coast of Africa and along the Tropic of Capricorn.
For more information about the expedition visit the Outside Edge website.
