“We The Africans”: How Two U.S. College Students Are Fighting a Hunger Pandemic in Ghana and Nigeria

by SHRIYA BHATTACHARYA

“Don’t wait until a tragedy strikes in order to act and implement change.”

These are the words that Mary Yeboah and Koluchi Odiegwu—two second-year college students at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia—live by.

Although these two young women have spent the past five months at home in isolation, beginning in April 2020, they’ve raised over $32,000 for remote villages in Africa whose inhabitants are facing mass hunger caused by the coronavirus.

Koluchi Odiegwu and Mary Yeboah helped feed over 800 families spanning nine isolated villages in Ghana and Nigeria. (COVID-19 Hunger Initiative)

Through their fundraising effort called the COVID-19 Hunger Initiative, they have helped feed over 800 families spanning nine isolated villages in Ghana and Nigeria. In a time when a global pandemic is disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations, these two young women are focusing their efforts on combating hunger in a part of the world they feel deserves more attention: Africa.