Phạm Quang Linh has painted a beautiful story on the arid land in Africa. — Photo vietnamnet.vn

HÀ NỘI — Young builder Phạm Quang Linh has managed to "paint" a beautiful farming story on arid land in Africa.

Linh, 24, from the central province of Nghệ An, lives in Angola. Linh and his friends are bringing new vitality to the country which faces hot and dry weather year-round.

Five years ago, Linh moved to the country on the other side of the world to find a new life as a construction worker.

After a period of working and accumulating a little capital, Linh opened a small stone workshop. This is also the time when Linh fell in love with YouTube in 2019.

Linh told vietnamnet.vn that he just wanted to record videos and post them on YouTube so that his family, friends and other people could learn about his life away from home.

After two years of posting about his life and work in Angola on the YouTube channel Quang Linh Vlogs - Cuộc Sống ở Châu Phi (Quang Linh Vlogs - Life in Africa), he has attracted 1.77 million subscribers and makes his living entirely from YouTube.

"My YouTube channel mainly publishes videos of the daily life of the people of Angola, especially when I spend my own money to give gifts and necessities to the poor children in Bailundo. The donations received encouragement from Vietnamese people around the world," he said.

Linh has even thrown a Vietnamese-style engagement party for an Angolan man named Lindo.

“Bringing Viet Nam's culture to African people is always mine and my friends’ desire. This small job lets people here know about Việt Nam so I am very happy," Linh said.

Linh and his team also built a channel about food called Ẩm Thực Châu Phi (African Cuisine) with more than 600,000 subscribers.

The videos posted on the channel were created by Linh and his Vietnamese and Angolan friends about Vietnamese and African cuisine. The group has also helped local people grow crops, which struggled to do successfully in the past.

So far, short-term crops such as cucumbers, tomatoes, Vietnamese corn seeds and cassava have been planted by local people with support from Linh and his friends.

Despite his success, Linh admitted it hasn't all been plain sailing so far.

“At present, I can't communicate very well. Local people use their own language which is difficult to understand. The dishes are also quite different, they mainly eat cornstarch instead of using rice as in Việt Nam."

A Vietnamese traditional Tết (Lunar New Year) atmosphere was set up by Linh and his friend in Angola. — Photo vietnamnet.vn

The group has also launched a project to help some 5,000 local children go to school.

This project started less than a month ago when they saw many local children could not afford to go to school.

“This project brings the most enthusiasm to the group, besides the desire to help bring 5,000 children to school, the group is also working on renovating the school for them including painting and repairing the classrooms and buying furniture for them,” Linh said.

This project is being enthusiastically supported by Linh's community and his group will sell shirts to raise funds for charity. Each shirt sold will help one child have the opportunity to go to school for a year and so far more than 1,00 shirts have been sold.

"The funding for building houses, helping people grow crops and repair schools comes from my YouTube work," Linh said.

He said he received enthusiastic help when he first arrived in Angola from strangers and now he ways to repay the favour.

“I feel they live better every day and feel happy despite lacking many things. Because of such things, I want to help more people,” Linh said. — VNS