Recent college graduate Sean Maher is set to travel unaided through West Africa to escape the world wide recession and raise £10,000 for charity. He tells Adventure World why:

In November this year I plan to cycle from the UK to Cape Town. There are two reasons for doing so: The first is to keep myself occupied for a year and the second is to prove to myself, and to other people that even though the recession is biting, we don’t really have it all that bad.

The worldwide recession which began in 2008 has affected a lot of people but as a graduate I really felt the brunt of it. I graduated in June this year with a politics degree from Exeter University in the UK. After applying for hundreds of jobs, literally, I was still left unemployed. Instead of moping around and waiting to apply again next year I decided to keep myself occupied by cycling from the poorest area of the UK, Cornwall, to the richest area of the world’s poorest continent, South Africa.

Most people ask first of all, why Africa? It’s because it’s so different. A very small percentage of the world’s population live in temperate climates, the majority live in hot climates. Living in Northern Europe the African climate will be a massive shock. The continent is also so vast that it is like a microcosm of the world. From desert to scrub to tropical rainforest and back again with the equator as the line of symmetry. The people are colorful and varied, the communities are vibrant and these people of the sun live in the land of our ancestors in the continent which gave birth to humanity.

The alternative images the continent conjures are worse: extreme famine, child soldiers and war. It would be lovely to chat to some Sierra Leoneans and leave the country knowing that things have moved on from the things I have read or seen on the big screen. Despite many of these views being wide of the mark Africa is by the far the poorest continent on earth. It did manage , however, to avoid the worst of the credit crunch. The reason for this is that their banks were managed with such conservatism that they were barely exposed to the sub-prime market which caused havoc elsewhere. People shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that even after this minor economic triumph the majority of the people of Africa are worse off financially than those elsewhere.

The trip should be amazing and I should learn a lot and raise as much as possible for my chosen charities. These are Unicef, Pump Aid and two UK charities.
On top of this I get to spend 6 months on a bicycle, what could be better!

Sean is still looking for sponsors. To find out more visit www.ridingouttherecession.co.uk