Biking Africa for Acumen

Twenty-four-year-old New Zealander Phillip English has been making his way by bicycle from Egypt to Cape Town, travelling for the past 10 months over some 15,000km through Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Lesotho, before arriving in South Africa via KwaZulu-Natal. English said the main motivation for the trip was to meet extended family, but also to raise money for NGO, the Acumen Fund, which uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty. English said his journey was full of surprises, including having to ride through the desert in Sudan in extreme heat, having his bicycle stolen at a compound in Ethiopia, and crashing in Kenya. “In Kenya I was warned by some motorists that there were leopards ahead, so I bought a machete,” he said.