Zimbabwe’s Friendship Bench Wins Prestigious KBF Africa Prize, Bringing Mental Healthcare to Communities Worldwide
The King Baudouin Foundation has awarded its prestigious 2025–2026 KBF Africa Prize to Zimbabwe’s Friendship Bench, recognising a pioneering community-based mental health model that began with a simple wooden park bench and has since grown into a programme now influencing healthcare approaches in dozens of countries around the world.
The award, presented at a ceremony at the Royal Palace in Brussels, comes with a €250,000 grant and access to the Foundation’s international network of partners and experts. It was established to recognise African organisations driving locally led, sustainable solutions to the continent’s most pressing challenges.
Friendship Bench was founded in 2006 by Professor Dixon Chibanda, a Zimbabwean psychiatrist who noticed a catastrophic gap in mental health services across his country. With fewer than 18 psychiatrists serving a population of over 17 million people, and mental health receiving less than 1% of the national health budget, Professor Chibanda knew that conventional approaches to mental healthcare were simply not going to reach those who needed them most.
His solution was characteristically simple yet revolutionary: train ordinary community members, particularly older women known affectionately as “grandmothers,” to deliver basic cognitive behavioural therapy in outdoor community settings, typically on wooden benches located near clinics and community gathering points.
These benches, which give the programme its name, offer a discreet, accessible, and culturally appropriate space where people experiencing depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions can receive support from a trained listener without the stigma often associated with seeking formal psychiatric help.
The programme costs between just 3 and 6.50 per client served, making it one of the most cost-effective mental health interventions in the world. Clinical evidence shows it delivers substantial outcomes, with some studies reporting up to an 80% reduction in symptoms of depression and anxiety among those who complete the programme.
What began in Zimbabwe has since expanded across Africa and beyond. Pilot programmes are now underway in Malawi, Kenya, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States, demonstrating the model’s adaptability to vastly different healthcare systems and cultural contexts.
The KBF Africa Prize selection committee described Friendship Bench as “a strong example of the African-led innovation the KBF Africa Prize was created to recognise.” The programme “offers a practical and scalable response to one of the world’s most pressing and neglected health challenges,” and “what began in Zimbabwe is now influencing how mental health care can be delivered around the world.”
Professor Chibanda expressed his gratitude and outlined his vision for the future, saying: “Too many people are left without life-saving support due to stigma, cost or distance. Friendship Bench was born out of the urgent need to bring mental health care to where people are. This important recognition from the KBF Africa Prize will allow us to reach thousands more people and help build a world where mental health care is within reach for everyone.”
The Friendship Bench award arrives at a critical moment. WHO estimates that around 150 million people in Africa are affected by mental health conditions, with access to services severely limited and unevenly distributed. In Southern Africa alone, up to 30% of adults are estimated to experience a mental health condition in their lifetime, yet fewer than 10% receive adequate care. Friendship Bench, with its community-led, scalable model, may be one of the most promising solutions to this continental crisis.
