The Kingsley Holgate Defender Transcontinental Expedition in numbers

Just a mere 13 months and some 40 000 km later, Kingsley Holgate’s humanitarian expedition has made its way back to Mzansi. The expedition started at Cape Aghulhas, the most southern point on the Africa continent and made its way to the most northern point of Europe, and then on to the mystical Isle of Anglesey in Wales. Why would someone venture on something of this kind, you may ask, “All of our expeditions have the principle of ‘saving and improving lives through adventure”, said Holgate.

Without any further ado, let’s have a look at the incredible achievement from this year’s Transcontinental Expedition in numbers.

The core Holgate team used two expedition-kitted P400 Defenders for the entire journey, with other team members joining the expedition along the way in their own Defenders.

The expedition covered close to 40,000km through 30 countries in Africa and Europe.

This expedition was the 40th for renowned explorer Kingsley Holgate.

The Kingsley Holgate Foundation became the first exploration team in 30 years to cross the African continent from south to north through both Sudans.

The team conducted humanitarian work that assisted around 300,000 people along the expedition’s route through Africa with nutritional support, malaria prevention, water purification and Rite to Sight.

Before crossing into Mozambique, the expedition reached the milestone of providing two million meals of nutritional support and early childhood development teaching materials to children at 130 rural creches, upgrading 20 of the most dilapidated, and completed projects to supply thousands of community residents with clean drinking water in water-scarce areas of northern KwaZulu-Natal.

In Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and South Sudan, the expedition worked with long-term partners Goodbye Malaria and in-country hospitals, churches, schools and community clinics on malaria prevention, providing educational material and distributing tens of thousands of Vestergaard high-quality, insecticide-treated malaria nets to pregnant women and mothers with young children who are the most vulnerable.

Thousands of eye-tests and reading glasses were distributed to mostly elderly, poor-sighted people in remote communities.

Before leaving South Africa, the expedition team partnered with conservation groups in the Eastern Cape to plant 6,000 indigenous Albany Thicket trees to offset the expedition’s carbon footprint.

Along the way, they also helped launch a One Million Tree-planting programme adjacent to Tanzania’s Serengeti.

In addition, a garden of spekboom was planted at Jaguar Land Rover Experience in Lonehill to offset the emissions produced by customer test drives at the centre. So far, 850 spekboom plants have been planted at the centre, and the aim was to plant another 2,500 spekboom plants by the end of 2022.

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Papi Mabele

Papi Mabele has a marketing background, he is a digital marketing expert with extensive experience in launching and building global brands in the emerging markets. Papi is also an avid tech writer, enthusiast and all round tech junkie. As a freelance writer and analyst he has been numerously published in Popular Mechanics (SA), GQ South Africa, Premier Magazine, Driven Magazine, Bloem News, Courant, The Weekly, Enthooze Magazine and PiE magazine amongst others.