It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Stephen Ndzerem, the founder and Director General of SHUMAS, our partner NGO in Cameroon.  He died on 18th January 2025 after a short illness.

Trustees of Building Schools for Africa first met Stephen in 2006, whilst volunteering in Cameroon.  He immediately impressed us with his energy and passion for helping poor rural communities improve their resilience, achieve their development goals and, in particular, get as many children as possible into school.  We have been working with Stephen and the whole SHUMAS team for almost 20 years, both in times of peace and throughout the war. Ours is partnership which seems to have worked miracles and neither he, nor we, had ever imagined that we could achieve so much for such relatively small amounts of funds.

We will miss his vision, his enthusiasm for Development, his generosity of spirit and his wonderful sense of humour, but we are fortunate to know that he and the SHUMAS management team had been making succession plans in recent years, so that the wonderful work of SHUMAS can continue even without him at the helm.