Prince Harry said he hoped his mother would have been proud of his charity efforts today as he worked up a sweat in Lesotho, where he is helping renovate the southern African country’s only school for disabled children.

The Prince carted wheelbarrows full of cement, hammered nails and filled a ditch - in between showing journalists around the project, which is run by his Sentebale charity.

The 23-year-old was joined by more than 20 comrades from the Household Cavalry’s Blues and Royals, who helped the Prince with manual labour at the Thubo Centre in Butha Buthe, in the north of the impoverished, landlocked country.

The Prince, pointing to a ramp he was helping to build at the entrance of the school, said: “All the kids are mentally and physically disabled. To expect them to walk up steps like these is madness.”

Prince Harry set up Sentebale two years ago, along with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, after spending part of his gap year in the country in 2004.

He also spoke of Lesotho’s HIV epidemic. Lesotho has an adult HIV prevalence rate of 30% and estimates suggest that as many as 200,000 of the country’s half a million school-aged children and young people have lost one or both parents to the disease.

He said a “vast quantity of the population don’t accept they have Aids - if you accept you have Aids it’s a treatable disease”.

He added: “Everybody needs to accept there’s a problem in Africa, problems at home. [We need to] get on with it and do what’s necessary to help.”

Asked whether his mother, Diana, the late Princess of Wales, would be proud of him, Prince Harry said: “I hope so.”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Everyone will get vaccine against swine flu
• Artificial sperm and the race to build a baby
• BBC jets out stars to tout for prizes