Our world is shifting, philanthropy faces unprecedented challenges, and attacks on gender justice are growing by the day. While the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) has felt these impacts alongside many of you, we choose to respond, as feminists always have, with greater purpose. Pushing to the best of our abilities, in the face of the growing limitations, all while remaining in community with African feminists and movement actors. 

We are excited to announce the launch of our call for proposals set to amplify and continue the necessary,  bold and radical gender justice and social transformation work being initiated and led by movement actors.  This funding opportunity is specifically tailored to support nascent, grassroots organisations, unregistered groups and movements in Africa who are often left out of funding opportunities. It affirms our unwavering commitment to resource, accompany African women’s rights organisations and feminist movements led by women, girls and gender-diverse people in ways that allow them to sustain transformative work.

The Call in Focus

For this funding cycle, we have tailored five (5) funding grants targeting different movement actors working on gender justice and social transformation. The available grant opportunities include:

Inua Grants – This grant will support initiatives that strengthen the voice, agency and leadership of women, girls and gender-diverse persons to lead actions that contribute to gender justice.

Siza Grants – This crisis response grant provides flexible funding to small grassroots and unregistered groups in building sustainable solutions in crisis and conflict areas.

Matla Grants – This grant will support delivery of essential services to women, girls and gender diverse persons experiencing violence, backlash and/or discrimination.

Zimba Grants – This grant will support capacity strengthening and movement building in French-speaking Africa.

Economic Justice Grant – This grant will resource organisations to dismantle the barriers to economic justice and equality for African women, girls and gender diverse persons.

Read more and apply HERE .

Key Dates

From 28 April to 27 May 2025,  we are accepting applications in English or French and strongly encourage applicants from Portuguese and Arabic speaking countries to submit their applications in English or French.