The spirit of Oprah Winfrey catches on! Angelique Kidjo, the African singer and UN Goodwill Ambassador, has created a foundation to fund for African girls' education to give them an opportunity to live a better life. Kidjo, who is from the poverty-stricken nation of Benin, said the Batonga Foundation offers scholarships to nearly four hundred girls completing primary school in 5 countries. The fund enables the girls to attend high school and go to university if they so choose.
At the fund launching in NY, Ms. Kidjo said that she envisioned that the Batonga Foundation would eventually cover all of Africa, although to begin with she is starting in just 5 countries - Benin, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Mali and Sierra Leone.
"It's better to start little than to start big and fail," she said.
"We are talking about kids that rely completely on a scholarship that you're going to give them to have a future. You can't drop the ball in the middle."
In 1/2007, Oprah Winfrey opened a forty million dollar secondary school for girls in South Africa, saying she wanted to groom talented girls from poor families to become leaders.
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