Focus on Africa was founded in 2012 and its founder bring a lot of experience into the Focus on Africa.
Leif Litsgård grew up in Jönköping/Sweden, in an entrepreneurship family. Instead of military service he went a year to the Sandö School run by the foreign ministry and SIDA. A year later he worked with the Swedish Lutheran church in Swaziland as a school builder.
During a holiday week 1977 he went to Mozambique and was recruited there by the ministry of education. He started there in September 1978 and worked 2 years with Mueda in northern Mozambique as base.
1982 to 1983 He was working for a year in Burundi in a school building project financed by SIDA. There he met his Swedish wife and got married 1984. After 4 years in Sweden and 2 children they went to Mozambique for building an educational center in Maputo. In 1990 we had talks with the minister of education to who we could offer to build 4 educational centers with focus on primary school. It was still not allowed in the country with community schools but 6 months later I got a letter from the minister telling the church was allowed to build 4 centers and could propose the leadership of the school and could teach Christian based ethics in the centers according to a new decision in the central committee.
1991 the work started and we completed the 4 centers and started a project department in the church where Leif was nominated responsible. There we did run many projects like cloth and food distribution during the war, construction of a 15 m long fishing boat and various church buildings. Development of teachers skill and gender questions.
From 1994 to 2009 the family were in Sweden and Leif completed a master in international education and a vocational teachers training.
2009 a Norwegian church asked them to work with educational development for 2 years. We lived at a center for street children and did build schools and had programs for HIV with focus on the girls in the schools.
When that finished we were asked by the Mocambican church to start to teach in western/Christian entrepreneurship. We got a License to use Focus Business School and trained trainers from all the provinces in Mozambique. As this worked well we offered this to other churches in Africa and did in 5 years start FBS in 11 African countries.
Since 2018 we focus on Mozambique and have discovered that the lack of communication between Christians and Muslims is an obstacle for economic micro development. We have hade seminaries in all provinces in Mozambique about how to communicate between Muslims and Christians. That experience we are now bringing with us in to the Institute of Media and Leadership. We are now training 50 to go to the non-reached people to proclaim the peace and development.
Summary of the history of FONA – Focus in Africa
Project: | Date: | By: |
Focus on Africa founded | 1 June 2012 | Leif Litsgård |
Christian Ethics & Morals course, approved in Mozambique * | 19 December 2018 | Leif Litsgård |
Focus on Africa starts “Swish” in Sweden | 19 December 2018 | Leif Litsgård |
Focus on Africa (FONA) is developed into Umbrella Organisation for Africa, working World wide. | 1 Januari 2021 | LG Eclundh |