A football club and a school have helped kit out schoolchildren in Africa as World Cup fever grabs the continent.

Children in Africa’s largest slum in Nairobi will be playing in Hitchin Town FC and Mary Exton Junior School football kits during the World Cup and beyond after they donated strips to charity KitAid.

Last week the kits joined thousands of others from schools and clubs up and down the country to be delivered to Mogra Star Academy and Rescue Centre in an area of the country called Mathare North.

Here almost 1,000 children between the ages of three and 18 who are often orphaned, abandoned or living with HIV are educated and cared for.

Sally Howe, Hitchin-based KitAid trustee who went out with the charity to deliver the kits, said: “It was an amazing experience and one that I will never forget. Kit from Hitchin is now being worn by children living in a slum called Jangwani which means ‘desert’.”

“Around 6,000 people live there in the worst conditions that I have ever seen. The houses are made from corrugated sheets of metal, with around five people living in a dark room approximately two meters square. Here they cook and sleep on a soil floor and have no running water, toilets or washing facilities.

“The school is really important for the children, not just for their education but also for the bare necessities of life – food. They feed the children with maize, wheat and occasional vegetables when they are available.”