North Star Alliance

A small store owned by a local businessman stays open late into the night in Chirundu with customers watching a Harry Potter DVD on the television. This small settlement on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe is a key transit point on the Great North trucking route from South Africa through to East Africa and [...]

Last week we introduced you to one of the strangest visitors ever to stop by our Roadside Wellness Center in Chirundu South, Zimbabwe. Only 200 meters from our Wellness Centre during the same site visit we came across a particularly mischievous group at the border that gives a new face to the old expression “highway [...]

This young bull elephant is a frequent visitor to the North Star Alliance Wellness Centre (top right) in Chirundu South, Zimbabwe. He often strolls by about 6pm with little more than a glance from staff. However, he has been known to snap off the water tap, trample some plants and startle the visiting North Star [...]

This photo was taken on the fly while travelling the busy Mombasa highway between Machakos Junction and Nairobi (Kenya). This is the main corridor for trucks carrying goods between Mombasa and Kampala (Uganda) and you can tell that the drivers are in it for the long haul. Staying safe on this road requires skilled driving, [...]

‎Last week, the North Star Alliance – TNT Express Roadshow stopped in the Hague to attend the “TNT Express Convention 2011 – A Global Team, working together”. While TNT has been a core partner of North Star since its inception, this convention was particularly exciting as it saw representatives from every country TNT works in [...]

This photo was taken during the road show at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MiBuZa) in September 2011 and shows TNT/North Star Alliance Project Manager Rosanne Bonanno explaining the mission of North Star to visitors. To date, the road show has travelled to five countries – Belgium, France, Italy, The Netherlands and Switzerland – [...]

This photo was taken in Chirundu, Zambia by Gideon Mendel and shows the truck parking area around customs buildings at the border. Chirundu is situated on the border to Zimbabwe in the South-East of Zambia. The largest sources of formal income are retail, freight and customs. The largest sources of informal income are vending and [...]

This photo was taken in Mwanza, Malawi by Audhriech-Kadyakapita, North Star Alliance clinician at our Mwanza Wellness Centre, where, this week, we launched a brand new HIV testing centre (on the right side). The opening of this new HIV Testing Centre is both exciting and significant, not only because it will allow us to greatly [...]

This photo was taken in Cotonou Benin by Marc Bullens, North Star Alliance Project Manager West Africa. “This is one of the hunderds fuel sellers in Cotonou. Those guys risk their life every day to earn a few euros. They get the fuel in Nigeria where its half the price as in Benin. They then [...]

This past week, I (JP Bervoets, North Star Alliance Special Projects Intern) drove from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Beitbridge, Zimbabwe to visit one of our Roadside Wellness Centres. Close to the Zimbabwean border along the N1 (a route familiar to many Southern African drivers), I snapped a few photos of the surrounding area (before settling [...]