VHUFULI – Former President Nelson Mandela has officially handed over one of the two schools the company has built and donated to the Vhufuli community in the Limpopo Province last Wednesday.

NAIL, more properly known as New Africa Investment Limited, donated R10 million to give a boost to education in one of the most impoverished provinces in South Africa, after being approached by the former president. As a result, NAIL got together with the Tshivhase Development Foundation Trust to build two schools near Thohoyandou.

"NAIL has put its money where its mouth is," said Saki Macozoma, NAIL's Chief Executive Officer. NAIL believes that business in South Africa has a massive imperative to help develop the country and we are leading by example. I have a vision that South Africa will be the skills resources for all of Africa, the NAIL schools will go some small way to making that dream a reality," he said.

NAIL Executive, Mr Aggrey Klaaste, the former editor of Sowetan, says the schools will serve as "intellectual resource centres" for communities. "They will also act as motivating forces to demonstrate clearly to the youth. There are people who genuinely care about their future," he said.

Recently eleven students have been selected to study in the United Kingdom by the Nelson Mandela Scholarship funded by the Unilever Foundation for Education and Development. The primary objective of this scholarship is the development of leadership capacity in previously disadvantaged communities.

Mandela will hand over the second school in Limpopo's Mphephu village in February next year.