OBE for Camfed founder & executive director

Camfed International is delighted to announce that its Founder and Executive Director Ann Cotton has been awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours List. The award is in recognition of her services to girls’ education in rural Africa.

Ann founded Camfed in 1993 after a research trip to Zimbabwe for a master’s thesis to study why so few girls attended secondary school. What she saw there shattered her illusions and changed not only her life, but those of thousands of girls who have since been helped by her work.

Fourteen years later, Camfed supports more than 71,000 children through school across Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana and Tanzania and reaches out to more than 427,000 people through its education, health and micro loans programmes in some of the poorest areas of rural Africa. As Ann explains:

“When I first had the idea for Camfed, a number of people told me that poor parents in Africa were resistant to their daughters’ education. I believed they were wrong and that grinding poverty was keeping girls out of school. And so it has proved.”

“The young women Camfed has worked with over the past 14 years have gone on to become doctors, lawyers and successful businesswomen and are showing the world what young African women can do. They are leading the way, and their progress is my inspiration. Now there is a real drive internationally for girls’ education. It is a just cause and it is finally widely recognised that, unless girls go to school, the next generation will be born into poverty.”

“I am thrilled to accept this honour on behalf of the remarkable international team of people with whom I work. I am also thrilled to accept the honour because it gives recognition to the hundreds of thousands of girls who remain outside school in Africa.”