YouTube creator Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has unveiled a nearly $10 million community development project in Ghana’s Eastern Region aimed at keeping children in school and away from illegal labour on cocoa farms.
Called Abna Dakwa Village, the project includes a school for more than 300 pupils, 10 homes for teachers, a medical clinic, marketplace, community centre, library and recreational facilities.
The development also provides clean-water infrastructure, solar power, a community farm, fish tanks and drainage infrastructure designed to reduce flooding during heavy rains.
A major component of the initiative is food security. Students at the school will receive free meals for five years, with support from The Rockefeller Foundation. The programme is also intended to support local agricultural production through the community farm.
The project was developed with support from the 1 Billion Followers Summit, Mohammed Bin Rashid Global Initiatives and the Varkey Foundation, while the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet supported the solar infrastructure.
Donaldson has also partnered with the Arbor Day Foundation after acknowledging that 190 trees were removed during construction. The partnership includes plans to plant 250 new trees.
Tackling Child Labour in Ghana’s Cocoa Sector
The project comes as Ghana’s cocoa-growing communities continue to face challenges linked to child labour, with children in farming areas exposed to hazardous work and, in some cases, missing school during peak farming periods.
The report links the problem to poverty and limited access to basic services in rural cocoa-producing communities.
Donaldson has connected the project to his broader philanthropic activities through Beast Philanthropy and his Feastables chocolate business, using his large online audience to draw attention to conditions in cocoa-producing communities.
The Ghana initiative expands on Donaldson’s previous work in Africa. In 2023, he funded the construction of more than 100 wells across Cameroon, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda and Zimbabwe, providing clean-water access to more than 250,000 people, according to Beast Philanthropy.
Unlike projects focused on a single facility, Abna Dakwa Village combines education, healthcare, housing, food, water, energy and livelihood infrastructure in one community development project.
MrBeast Responds to Criticism over Ghana Project
The project has also attracted criticism from some people who questioned why Donaldson was spending nearly $10 million on a project in Ghana rather than directing more philanthropic resources towards his hometown of Greenville, North Carolina.
Donaldson responded by pointing to the work already being carried out by Beast Philanthropy, his 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Greenville.
“I literally do. I run a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit and have distributed hundreds of millions of meals across the U.S., including many in my local community. If I listed all the philanthropic things we do locally I literally wouldn’t be able to fit it in this tweet,” he wrote.
Beast Philanthropy says its programmes have distributed more than 48 million meals through its Greenville food pantry and other programmes in the US and internationally.
With the Abna Dakwa project, Donaldson is extending his philanthropic activities into a broader community-development model focused on keeping children in school while providing basic infrastructure and support for families in a cocoa-growing area.
