MrBeast Builds $10M Village in Ghana for Cocoa Kids

Business Insider Africa reports MrBeast unveiled a nearly $10 million village in Ghana's Eastern Region to keep children in a cocoa community in school.

Business Insider Africa reports that Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has unveiled Abna Dakwa Village in Ghana's Eastern Region, a project costing nearly $10 million and aimed at keeping children in a cocoa-growing community out of illegal farm labour and in school. According to the outlet, the village includes a school for more than 300 pupils, 10 homes for teachers, a medical clinic, a marketplace, a community centre, a library and recreational facilities. Clean-water infrastructure, solar power, a farm and fish tanks are intended to support the community well beyond the classroom, and drainage work was carried out to stop flooding from keeping children home during heavy rains.

The scale is what makes this surprising even by MrBeast's standards: rather than funding a single school or a set of wells, Business Insider Africa describes an attempt to build an entire community around education, food, healthcare, housing, water, energy and livelihoods. 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 backed the solar infrastructure. Food is central: students will receive free meals for five years, with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, and the community farm is meant to bolster local agricultural production at the same time.

Business Insider Africa notes that Ghana's cocoa sector continues to face a child-labour problem, with children in farming communities often exposed to hazardous work and missing school during peak farming periods — an issue tied closely to poverty and limited access to basic services in rural cocoa-growing areas. Donaldson has linked the village to his wider efforts through Beast Philanthropy and his Feastables chocolate business, using his enormous YouTube audience to draw attention to conditions in cocoa production. The outlet also reports he partnered with the Arbour Day Foundation after acknowledging 190 trees were removed during construction, with plans to plant 250 new trees.

The project drew pushback on X from users who questioned why Donaldson was not spending the money in his hometown of Greenville, North Carolina. According to Business Insider Africa, he responded that he runs a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that has distributed hundreds of millions of meals across the U.S., including locally, and Beast Philanthropy says its programmes have distributed more than 48 million meals through its Greenville food pantry and other efforts. The Ghana project follows his 2023 funding of more than 100 wells across five African countries that the outlet says reached over 250,000 people. Separately, Yahoo reports Dude Perfect's summer arena tour sold nearly 250,000 tickets at prices rivalling an NBA game — a sign creator-led ventures now compete at mainstream scale.