3.) Beyond your ongoing fundraising needs to keep BFA going what is your greatest local challenge (political, logistical, economic, etc.) in the African nations where you work today?

“The geographic and logistic issues are a challenge given the size of Africa and the lack of, for example, an extensive rail system. As a result, we can ship books very cheaply and efficiently to the water ports, but it is very costly to move books further into the interior. We seek to work with local partners who have infrastructure (trucks, offices, staff, etc.) as a way to get books moved to more remote areas of Africa where the books are most scarce and hence most needed.”

4.) Is there one public policy and/or foreign aid program change that could be implemented that would benefit your organization's worthy projects?

“When I look at the tremendous impact that our organization can deliver on relatively small amounts of money, and then compare this to the large amounts of funding organizations such as the World Bank, UN, or US government expend in a variety of areas, I cannot help but think about what we could do with such funding. For example, $250,000 would be a large shipping grant for us. We could deliver about 700,000 books for that amount of funding. However, to many government entities this is such a small amount of funding that it would not even merit consideration of an application ...”

5.) Finally -- a personal question: Which book do you wish all Africans could read one day?

“I think if every African had access to an encyclopedia set, they would have all of the information at their fingertips. I’d love to have an up to date encyclopedia set in every African school library some day!