A Journey Through Africa - From the UK in 2015

Hi everyone!

This is my first post here so hopefully I'm doing it right!

Me and a friend are planning to go through every country in Africa (where the UK FCO doesn't advise completely against visiting) and produce a Documentary from it - starting from the UK.

We are looking for any advice from people who have done it before, places of interest and places to avoid - and also if anyone is willing to join us then we are on the lookout for someone who has pretty good camera skills to help us document it!

Full details are available on the website we setup - but unfortunately I cannot post it here until I have been a member for a week (but please PM me if you are interested) - and we have already had a number of sponsors come forward with various items for the expedition.

Any questions, comments or advice will be welcomed!

Nathan and Thomas

Hi and  welcome, and good luck with your trip,  

Hi Gents,

Sounds like an interesting project. Pretty ambitious trying to hit all 50+ African countries. I will be interested to see what kind of a route you plan. I have lived in, worked in or driven through about half of Africa now, so as your plan firms up I will be happy to offer some suggestions. Of course we will all be interested in what vehicle you choose and how you set it up.

As far as the documentary goes, I am also interested to hear about the theme. It is going to focus on you two and the adventure/challenges...or are you going to be looking at some aspect of African life or environmental issues?

You will get lots of advice on here if you ask. I would suggest coming out to Adventure Overland show in September as well and meeting some of the overlanders on here.

Good luck!

Here you go ...

The website URL is www.ajourneythroughafrica.org.uk, although I'm told the best page for information is www.ajourneythroughafrica.org.uk/overview

... and welcome from myself also!  

Hey everyone!

Thank you for you response - rather than duplicate everything, details of the route and vehicles we are taking are on the URLs provided.

The aim is to go through as many countries as possible, unless the UK FCO completely advise against travel (as that would be very silly of course...!).

Thomas is taking a Land Rover (already kitted out) but my vehicle is a Mitsubishi L200 Warrior (which is in need of a few modifications to get it ready!).

Funding-wise, we are reliant heavily on sponsorship, but the past few weeks have seen some excellent sponsors come forward with some pretty good gear!

Following stories of others as well - makes it even more exciting!

Feel free to ask anything, I'm happy to answer anything and everything!

Nathan

A lot of information on the website lads, so just trying to get my head around all this. It states ...

How You Can Help

In order for us to document the expedition successfully and tell the world, we need your help – unfortunately this does have to come in the form of money! But don’t despair, you will get something in return and be part of something rather exclusive!

Everyone, no matter how little or much you fund, will be given exclusive access to our online area where you will see photos, diaries, videos and regular updates. As these will mainly be real-time, they will not be what the general public see on the website. So you will be one of the lucky few!

Then it goes on to explain about the two charities you're raising funds for - Help For Heroes and Cancer Research UK, two great causes.

Charities

The expedition has been setup to support 2 Charities – where all of the funds generated after everything has been paid and we are safely back in the UK are split equally between them. This includes sales of the DVDs, TV Series and any other memorabilia.

We will also be selling their merchandise at shows and events where we will also be boosting awareness of the Expedition and Charities themselves. Fund Raising pages will be provided once everything is finalized (spelling BTW should be 'finalised' not finalized, hate Americanisms and U.S. English spellchecks - which yours is probably set on. It also states in About Thomas - "Unlike Nathan, Thomas is well-traveled!!!) so you can also donate directly to the Charities themselves.

What I didn't read and therefore don't understand is (a) how you're funding the actual expedition, and (b) how you're raising funds for the charities? I understand you're generating overall funds from the "DVDs, TV Series and any other memorabilia", but the charity fund-raising doesn't appear to be separate. I'm confused!!!  

Hi Tom!

I have fixed some of the typos I spotted - and yes, it is set to U.S English! I usually get fed up and just change it rather than see loads of red underlined words! Oops.

I have added a bit at the bottom to mention that the Expedition costs will be funded by Sponsorship - the funds for the Charities will be raised by selling their memoribilia at events/shows and such, and also the DVDs/Books once we have covered the costs of the expedition - so the more we raise through Corporate Sponsorship (its working well, finalising one more that should make us hit £10k of our target) the more we can give to the Charities.

We will be raising money directly for the Charities (regardless of sponsorship) when we attend events and shows with our vehicles/equipment, as we will have collection tins for the Charities and such.

Our aim is at least £10,000 for each Charity - very optimistic, but some of the equipment could also be sold / auctioned off at the end as well.

Nathan

Aha, good man, now that makes sense. All too often people can see raising funds for charity as a way of the participants 'having a jolly'. Not for a second am I suggesting you come into that category, but when fund-raising for charity you not only have to be whiter than white, you have to be seen as being whiter than white.

That I feel should be made plain from the very start - the expedition costs are being met via commercial sponsorship, the funds raised for charity are totally separate. Put it this way, I was somewhat confused and I've run events where directly or indirectly funds for charitable causes have been raised.For Joe Public it must be even more confusing.

My suggestion for what its worth ... make this commercial/charity fund-raising aspect of the expedition crystal clear on the website from the beginning, otherwise you'll make a rod for your own back later down the line.

BTW, that's one hello of a target you've set yourselves. Why not? If you don't try ...

Yep - it was one of my struggles to get the balance right - my heart is for the Charities, my dream is for the Expedition. So I had to make sure my heart stays true no matter what happens to the dream!

So through personal funds and sponsorship my aim is to cover the costs (or like it has been so far, sponsorship of equipment and services to reduce the costs) and then by attending events / shows / etc. we can showcase the vehicles, the expedition and most importantly, the Charities - having collection tins to hand so that the money goes straight to the Charity at the end of the day.

Our sponsorship target is £50k - this is our maximum and will mean some really good equipment, but worse case scenario, even if we hit half of that - it will go ahead. Our aim for each Charity is a minimum of £10k - as publicity increases then so should the Charity target, but the sponsorship target will always be the same. I would like to hit £100k to each Charity (double our sponsorship target) - but that may be too ambitious!

On the plus side, I have had a few sponsors approach me, as opposed to approaching them - small local companies willing to support us in various ways (e.g. camping shops and such) and everything is welcomed!

That's an incredible target you've set yourselves - best of British your endeavours.   

As well as our Twitter, Facebook and Website - we will also be updating our progress here to keep everyone informed!

We have now taken the decision to take just one vehicle - and to everyones surprise, it will be the Mitsubishi L200! We have come to the conclusion that most overland expeditions are completed in a Land Rover, so we wanted to be different.

On the plus side, the L200 is much larger so we can carry a lot more in the back and on the roof - plus there is plenty of room for a bigger fuel tank underneath.

We are out there to be different, so lets start from the beginning!

Forgot to mention, we will also be attending The Adventure Travel & Overland Show at Stratford-upon-Avon Racecourse on the weekend of 27-28 September 2014.

We will be showing our (hopefully) completed vehicle by then, our Charities and Sponsors as well. We hope to see many of you there!

Looking forward to seeing the motor,   

All the best Nathan and Thomas, and welcome to the forum! I see you have met our resident spell checker....   
The Global Adventure team will also be at the Overland show this year!   

For your interest, E bay has a Charity page. I have looked into this and you can set it up so people can buy merchandise from you and a % can go to a designated charity. You set the % when you set the account up.
See here - http://pages.ebay.co.uk/ebayforcharity/

The process is all taken care of by E bay, so once its set up it needs very little interaction from yourselves.
Im sure you are also aware of 'Virgin Giving' where you can set up a page with details of your trip and people can donate to the assigned charities?
https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/giving/

Just ideas for you if you are not already aware!

Have a look at the following link. This is when I took my 9 year old son to Morocco and delivered some supplies to the kids out there. At the same time we raised a fair bit of coin for our designated charity.
http://norfolkzipperclub.weebly.com/2011-morocco-adventure.html

scott.l. wrote:

All the best Nathan and Thomas, and welcome to the forum! I see you have met our resident spell checker....   

What? I didn’t think anyone realized? I dunno, I spend my vacation organizing and categorizing all the posts of travelers on this forum, centering my attention on optimizing the colors and analyzing the data – there’s a lot to catalog you know – it’s a real labor of love.  

Hi Scott!

Indeed, each Charity we are raising for have different sites for raising funds - so am going through the process to set them up so people can start donating directly to the Charities.

-----

An update on the expedition itself though, Thomas will be focusing on his business now, so I am on the lookout for another "Travel Buddy" if anyone knows of someone! Would prefer them to be in the South West to make it easier to meet up and stuff.

We also have a new mascot! One of the Charities we are supporting have provided us with Colonel Kev Ted RM - and we may even have a couple of them to give out at Events, Shows and quite possibly the Children of Africa too! Check out www.ajourneythroughafrica.org.uk/2014/03/27/a-new-member-to-the-team

Whatever happens though, the expedition will go ahead!

Hi,

Sorry I didn't read all the message, but we're on a trip from Belgium to SOuth Africa along the East coast.
We keep information for other travellers on our website http://www.waarisworteltje.be and have a look on the 'travellers' page. We urgently need to update this,but as you didn't leave yet, we've time!

Have a lot of fun on the road!

Eef and Dries

Hi Nathan,

We started our journey down the west coast in September 2012 and finished in Johannesburg in October 2013. Although we did not travel all the way down we spent about three months in north west Africa and ended up exploring Southern Africa for about 6 months at the end.

We collated all our financial information, and we kept track of all our campsites as we went along, plus a write-up of all our border crossings. We created a fact sheet for each country we went through - all available on our blog www.kapp2cape-blog.net. There is also a thread under Current Trips on this forum where we have copied all our blog-posts. You can also contact us on fb.

Best of luck in preparation and with finding sponsors and donors.

Please ask if you have specific questions. Happy to help.

@Eef and Dries: hope you are well. It has been a while since Kampala.

Oyvind (aka Viking Explorer)

Hi
we will be going down in a Bedford MK in January 2015...taking 6 month and going via west and central Africa, we will be taking 14 passengers, so you are welcome to join us as a passenger , it would give you more time to film and less worry about the paperwork/roads/visa

www.vikingsacrossafrica.co

Firstly hi and welcome to the forum !

Wow that is some trip you're planning !

If I can add my 2ps worth in 2010 myself and a friend who was the chairman of the "Welcome st George's" charity in Cairo planned to take 2 land rovers each towing 3.5 tonne trailers containing medical suppliers, clothes and tents, down through Europe across the med into Egypt.

Although this was a big jolly for us we like yourselves managed to raise sponsorship and had some serious planning meeting with a couple of ethically known cooperatives to get together the funds to pay for the vehicle maintenance and some items of kit for the trip (mainly tyres and spare parts on sale or return basis etc)
Food, fuel, personal kit including 2 Ifor Williams trailers ferries etc would be coming out of our personal money.

After investigating the total cost of the trip (around £4.5k) per vehicle we decided it was a total conflict of interest i.e. why spend £9k on getting the supplies to the charity, when we could just write a check and all the money would then go to the cause.

In the end we took part in Tom's Landy Rally a personal cost to the both of us of about £750 each and the total amount of the sponsorship money was then donated via Virgin's charity page (100% to charity no admin fee) we believed a win, win scenario, we got a great, holiday and the charity benefitted immensely.

I know this isn't what you're trying to accomplish but we had a great experience and managed to send children and families the needed money and trust me it bought a lot more locally than we could have transported there.

Good luck with your endeavour the charities you are supporting are both worthy causes.
There is a wealth of knowledge on the forum, loads of people been there done that and got the tee shirt and I'm sure will give time and advice freely to help you to reach your aim.

Hi
Thanks for the info...just one thing, this is not for charity, its just for the hell of it.
i dont understand if someone take a road trip on route 66 in America, its all good, but when in Africa its all about charity, Sorry, its just a personal "pet hate" but for me Africa is not about poverty its about the start of civilisation, its about adventure, its different culture and open spirits, Africa is the worlds home, we are all African ...but thats just how i feel....sorry for the rant

Well said Gazza. Well done for hitting the nail so firmly on the head. My thoughts exactly.


I don't want to pour water on your trip Nathan and Thomas.

Reading the news I don't think there will be any African travel next year. Namibia has already closed its borders to people passing through Ebola countries. I'm sure more countries will follow.

Shame South America is so far away, that's a part of the world I'd love to visit.

Tom Mc wrote:

Shame South America is so far away, that's a part of the world I'd love to visit.

Have you actually priced shipping to South America. No Carnet needed, that's a big saving.

To be honest I haven't. What's best then, shipping or hiring a 4x4?