Bedex Development Foundation started out as informal family philanthropy by Mr. Bede Okafor and his wife, Maureen. Shortly after getting married, the couple decided to commemorate their  Birthdays and Anniversaries outside the cliché of candle-lit dining and house parties. They chose instead to spend them with resident children and staff at orphanages, extending their warmth through fun-games and gifts. Over time, they would extend these gestures to hospitals, old people’s homes, Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDP) camps and correctional facilities.

Observing firsthand the dire situation of the underprivileged through these engagements, they decided to go a step further by dedicating portions of their mutual incomes to follow-up affirmative actions. In this respect, they started paying off hospital and maternity bills of indigent patients as well as undertaking the upkeep and education of certain orphaned children.  

In 2020, the need to formalize the Foundation and significantly spread its outreach became evident in the wake of ravaging economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Faced with teeming pleas for assistance by persons who had lost their livelihood, Bede and Maureen understood that this project needed to be structured into a wider, self-growing programme to assure that the increasing demography of beneficiaries would be covered on a sustainable basis.