Infratech Africa is evolving as a Kingdom business with purpose to do business to transform communities. Infratech Africa could be described as an umbrella-company that, through its owners/directors, houses a number of businesses, which work together to fulfill this vision. The businesses therefore, included under the Infratech Africa banner includes Road- infrastructure, Housing-infrastructure and development and Literacy and Education- infrastructure.
We started as a group of like-minded and hearted people (all from the rēp family and actually met through rēp ventures and activities in South Africa) that experienced Jesus commandment to go and disciple the nations. We asked ourselves, “How will it be when heaven invades earth and particularly places where we have extreme poverty and injustice?”
The one business line that has seemingly made the most societal impact to date is our Literacy and education arm. This is done through the business called the Tina Cowley Reading center Strand/Somerset West. Here we have just started a second reading center in the community of Sir Lowry’s Pass Village to address their current literacy rate of 14% (for Grade 6’s). We have enrolled 420 foundation phase learners (Grade 1 to Grade 3) of the local primary school after we had proven the impact and success (average improvements of 100-300% were measured for three different student groups) of the program during a pilot phase with 66 learners over the previous 18 months. We wish to eradicate illiteracy over the next three to four years. In doing so, establish a model with Father God’s grace in our area. This can then be used to counter illiteracy and a weak education systems and ultimately poverty. We also built a discipleship program into our methodology and wish to disciple the children and through them the parents of the community.
Father God has provided us with favor in the community, but also blessed our pilot program. We operate the program with private funding. To date Father God provided funds for 175 of the kids on the program. The cost is only USD $10 per child per month and this is only 20% of the normal fee for such a program. We continually seek more sponsors to allow more children into this ministry.
We also progressed with our first property development project in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. This is also the birth place of Nelson Mandela. God led us to this area as the Eastern Gate Way of the Cape Region in South Africa. Sir Lowry’s Pass is also the Eastern Gate of Cape Town. It seems as if the eastern geographical points are the Places we will start our various projects. The property development is being launched this weekend after about 12 months of very hard work with the Mthatha local development team. Here we are partnering with the Xhosa speaking people while in Sir Lowry’s Pass we partner predominantly with the Khoi (1st nation) people of South Africa.
We are also still working to redo our first road-project in the Sir Lowry’s Pass area (place) and this we can only describe as a two-year learning phase. We experienced Father God’s leading in specifically partnering and product, process as well as profit with this area of the business and believe the breakthrough is near.
We have been close to Brett and Lyn (US rēp) as well as the rēp community in South Africa from the start of the business in 2009. We can only say that as this business was formed to honor Father God and build Kingdom our focus has not been to make profit as the first and ultimate purpose. We are in Father God’s Hands and believe that is the place to be- allowing him to lead us as our CEO. Our dream remains to build a true Kingdom business, which operates to impact society for the Kingdom.
Regards and blessings
Campher Serfontein, Francois Steyn, Henrie Jonck, Gerhard Venter and Errol Smith