Network updateActiveAugust 20265 min read

Three Sankofa pilots operational in Tanzania

A chance meeting in October 2025 became a classroom of 95 children. Ten months on, three pilots are running across rural Tanzania, teaching 185 pupils with the resources already at hand.

Honda, Udilo Mufindi and Mdabulo, Tanzania

A large group of children in green school jumpers and knitted hats crowded around adults working with number cards on a woven floor mat. — Children gathered around a set of counting materials laid out on the floor mat.

Pilots operational: Three — Honda, Udilo Mufindi, Mdabulo
Pupils engaged: 185 across the three sites
Honda enrolment: 92, after 10 months
Partner: Rural Development Organization (RDO)

Sankofa Honda came into existence through a serendipitous meeting with Erika Bonifasi in early October 2025. A few weeks later, 95 children were regularly attending classes in this underserved rural community, 80 km south of Dar es Salaam.

Through the leadership of Fidelis Filipatali, Project Coordinator for the Rural Development Organization (RDO), Honda was quickly followed by two more. Sankofa Udilo Mufindi opened with Isaya Kalinga in November 2025, and, more recently, Sankofa Mdabulo RDO with Fredi Lutego in February 2026.

The three pilots

Pilot	Opened	Led with
Sankofa Honda	October 2025	Erika Bonifasi
Sankofa Udilo Mufindi	November 2025	Isaya Kalinga
Sankofa Mdabulo RDO	February 2026	Fredi Lutego

The painted exterior wall of a kindergarten building, lettered MIC KINDERGARTEN beside a painted Tanzanian flag, with a potted flowering plant below. — A painted wall, a flag and a plant in a repurposed tin — the front of the school.

Children in green uniforms gathered outside brick school buildings on a dirt path, with a teacher crouching to speak with them and hills in the distance. — Outside the classroom, in the highlands.

Only the resources at hand

Rahabu Filipatali, wife of Fidelis and a teacher in the Montessori school system, played a key role in developing these initiatives. Today they engage 185 pupils using only the resources at hand, supplemented by a few passive educational tools bought with the proceeds of honey sales from RDO.

“185 pupils, taught with what the community already has — and a few tools paid for by selling honey.”

What that looks like in practice: number and letter cards laid out on a woven floor mat, a hand-drawn counting board, painted digits running along a veranda wall for children to reach up and touch, a syllable chart chalked straight onto bare concrete. Nothing that needs a supplier, a budget line or mains electricity.

Adults and children kneeling around numbered discs and a shallow tray on a woven mat, arranging them into order. — Numbered discs and a tray, worked through on the mat.

A hand-made counting board of numbered discs and coloured dots laid on a woven mat, with children sitting around it clapping. — A hand-made counting board — dots to match against numerals.

Children standing at a low wooden shelf of painted letter cards, one child holding up a green card reading ch. — Holding up a letter card at the shelf.

A classroom with woven floor mats, a mud-plastered blackboard, a painted zebra on the wall and a low wooden shelf holding numbered and lettered cards. — The whole room: mats, a plastered blackboard, and one low shelf of materials.

Children lined up along a veranda reaching up to touch large painted numerals one to ten on the school wall. — The wall itself as a number line.

Young children stretching up on tiptoe to reach painted numbers high on the veranda wall, with painted birds and animals above the windows. — Stretching for the higher numbers.

A group of children spread along the veranda wall, some pointing at the painted numerals, one turning to face the camera. — Everyone gets a turn at the wall.

A Swahili syllable chart headed Kusoma, chalked in rows onto a bare concrete wall, with two small children sitting on the floor in front of it. — Kusoma — reading. The syllable chart is chalked straight onto the wall.

Learning through movement and the day itself

The classes are not still ones. Between the mat work there is running, rolling and games across the floor mats; there are seedlings to carry out and plant in the ground outside; there is a meal to sit down to together. The teaching folds into the ordinary shape of the day rather than sitting apart from it.

Children moving freely across the woven floor mats of a classroom, some running, some rolling, with adults watching from the side. — Movement time on the mats.

Children spread out across floor mats mid-game, stretching, crawling and lying down, with a shelf of learning materials against the wall. — Games that use the whole floor.

A crowd of children in green uniforms outside the school, gathered around adults handing over a young potted tree seedling. — A seedling handed over outside the classroom.

Children crouching and standing around a young tree seedling newly planted in bare red earth, reaching towards it. — Planted, and inspected by everyone at once.

Children sitting in rows along the walls of a bare classroom on woven mats, listening, with a teacher seated among them. — Settling in at the start of the session.

Children seated at wooden benches eating from coloured plastic bowls in a classroom. — A meal at the desks — part of the day, not an extra.

A class in session, recorded on a phone and sent up the line — this is what reporting from a rural pilot actually looks like.

The numbers after ten months

Thirty pupils from Honda have now graduated into the country's primary school system, replaced by another 27 students — dropping overall enrolment by three, to 92 after ten months. That is the shape a working pilot makes: children moving on into formal schooling, and new ones arriving to take their places.

95 children attending Honda within weeks of the pilot's founding.
30 Honda pupils graduated into the national primary school system.
27 new students enrolled in their place, leaving Honda at 92.
185 pupils engaged across all three Tanzanian pilots.

These initiatives continue to attract significant interest from local and federal branches of the Tanzanian government. Further pilot projects are planned as Sankofa continues its outreach to underserved rural communities across Tanzania.

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