Mola’s Child is a powerful memoir that begins with Ann’s arrival in the village of Mola in Zimbabwe, a community forcibly displaced from the Zambezi Valley under colonial rule. She is disorientated by the heat and poverty. The kindness of the community enables her to embark on a journey that is ultimately transformative for her and for the lives of millions of girls. 

Ann’s experience in Mola inspires her to look back to her childhood and adolescence in Wales that shaped the values she brought to her work. Accessible, heartfelt, and quietly revolutionary, the memoir invites readers to see what Ann sees, hear what she hears, and walk alongside her as she learns how poverty, not tradition or culture, is the true barrier to girls’ education. This misconception and the injustice of girls’ exclusion inspires her to found Camfed. 

Through vivid portraits of rural schoolgirls, community leaders, and families struggling to survive, the book reveals how the courage and capability of those who were most excluded create lasting change. This change is embodied by an alumnae of young women across five African countries and beyond, united by their shared background in poverty, their transformation through education and their commitment to support others.

The title of the book refers to a little boy during a time of severe drought who was hiding a cup of porridge given to him at school. He was taking it home to share with his family. His generosity stands in contrast to the selfishness of so much of the wider world. The title also honours Ann’s own daughter, whose death, rooted in the abuse of medical power, led her to recognise similar injustices in the lives of poor women whose lives were constrained by the impact of race, class and gender. 

Mola’s Child challenges the status quo of international development by showing that communities, long marginalised by empire or their own governments, hold the knowledge, leadership and commitment needed to overcome poverty when their agency is valued and respected. At its heart, the book is about turning development practice on its head, by listening with respect to schoolgirls, rural families, teachers and traditional Chiefs, all experts in their own lives. It is a call to reimagine development as a fight for justice, rooted in humility, emotional intelligence, and the strength of those too often overlooked.