Category: News

After nearly six years at the helm of the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), Chief Executive Officer Françoise Moudouthe has decided to step down from her role, with her final day being 30 June 2026, to pursue a new professional opportunity.

Reflecting on her decision, Françoise shared:

“Serving as CEO of AWDF has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. I am deeply grateful to have been entrusted with building on AWDF’s extraordinary vision, impact, and legacy, and proud of what we have advanced together with focus and integrity. At a time that calls for clarity of purpose, I have chosen to focus my contribution to gender justice on girls’ rights, an area that remains critically overlooked and underfunded.”

To ensure a smooth transition, the AWDF Board of Directors has appointed Nana Zulu, currently Director of Programmes, as Interim CEO for a nine-month term (effective 1 July 2026), during which a new CEO will be recruited. Nana has been instrumental in shaping AWDF’s context-responsive programmatic strategy and brings a clear vision, strong leadership, and deep commitment to the organisation’s mission and values.

Nana shared:

“I am honoured to step into the role of Interim CEO at this pivotal moment. We remain focused on meeting the demands of this moment: resourcing feminist movements, defending the rights of women, girls and gender-diverse people, challenging oppressive power structures, and shaping the feminist futures that African feminists envision. I look forward to working closely with the Board, our team, and most importantly, our partners to carry this work forward with clarity, accountability and courage.”

AWDF enters this transition from a position of strength. The organisation has a clear strategic direction, a capable and committed team, strong relationships with African feminist movements, and the continued trust of its funding partners.

Board Chair Jean-Ann Ndow added:

“The Board thanks Françoise for her visionary leadership and her fearless advocacy in favour of African women’s rights and feminist movements. Her commitment to listening to those at the forefront of injustice made AWDF stronger, and the way she centred care in her work was deeply felt by the team and Board. We wish her well as she moves to the next chapter in her journey. Looking forward, AWDF remain steadfast in its mandate, and the Board has full confidence in Nana’s ability to lead AWDF through this transition and deepen our impact.

With the guidance of the Board and the support of the team, Françoise and Nana will work closely together over the coming months to ensure a structured and thoughtful handover. Further updates will be shared with our partners and allies as the transition progresses.

As women’s rights and feminist activists gather in Naarm (Melbourne), for the Women Deliver Conference, we do so in a moment shaped by urgency and possibility. Across the world, feminist movements are experiencing intensifying  backlash and a roll back of hard won feminist gains, yet even in this context they continue to organise, resist and reimagine feminist futures often with limited funding. 

As we gather, we arrive in this space with clarity of purpose and solidarity. We show up fierce, united, and unequivocal for the African feminist movement on the global stage. Our voices are critical, our presence is necessary, and we remain steadfast in ensuring that African feminists are both heard and sustainedWe are excited to share AWDF’s plans for the Women Deliver conference taking place 27–30 April: a space to strategise, resist, and build a future rooted in solidarity, justice, and joy.On the sidelines of Women Deliver, we are creating a space to listen, reflect, and speak honestly about where we are and where we are headed. We will share AWDF’s direction of travel, a bold three-pronged commitment to Defend, Disrupt, and Define resourcing resistance, disrupting harmful systems and narratives, and investing in the feminist futures we are building together and anchored in our strategic framework Lemlem.

Additionally, join us across the following spaces, where we will be speaking, engaging, listening, and connecting, all in service of building stronger African feminist futures.

If you would like to connect with us at Women Deliver, we would love to meet you. Reach out to us at communications@awdf.org. And if you are hosting a space and would like us to participate, share the details, and we will be glad to join.

Join the conversation, Watch Live on Instagram , The Enduring Power of African Feminisms: Celebrating 20 Years of the African Feminist Forum  hosted by Black Women Radicals featuring  Florence F/Khaxas  Founder and Executive director of Y-Fem Namibia Trust and Françoise Moudouthe CEO of African Women’s Development Fund.

The IG Live will take place on Friday, April 17 at 6 PM GST/1 PM EST on Black Women Radicals’ Instagram @blackwomenradicals.

About the event: This IG Live dFlorence F/Khaxas and Françoise Moudouthe, steering committee members of AFF 2026, who will discuss what to expect at the forum; why AFF is needed in this contemporary political moment for African and African Diasporic feminists; and the enduring power and imagination of African feminisms.

The African Feminist Forum (AFF) is a regional gathering that brings together African feminist activists to discuss strategy, refine approaches, and develop stronger networks to advance women’s rights in Africa. Created to affirm and uplift the progressive visions and strategies of African feminists, AFF held its inaugural convening in Ghana in 2006, where over 100 African feminists from the continent and across the diaspora gathered to strengthen feminist mobilization. During AFF 2006, the Charter of Feminist Principles for African Feminists was created, which established the collective values of AFF. Since then, AFF has hosted other convenings in Uganda (2008) and Senegal (2010).

Twenty years since the inaugural forum, AFF will convene this year in Windhoek, Namibia from August 10-12, 2026.

Original blog content courtesy of Black Women Radicals

The African Women‘s Development Fund is seeking an exceptional feminist leader to join the AWDF team as Director of Partnerships and Voice. This is an exciting leadership opportunity to work  at the intersection of resource mobilisation, strategic partnerships, thought leadership, voice and influence.

About AWDF

As a pan-African feminist fund, the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) resources, strengthens and upholds women’s rights and feminist organisations and movements across Africa to make gender justice a reality for all on our continent and worldwide. Over the past 24 years, AWDF has awarded approximately USD 100 million to women’s rights and feminist organisations throughout Africa (and in selected Middle Eastern countries through one of our initiatives). Through its grantmaking, programmatic, and advocacy work, AWDF has supported work that has led to changes in law and policy, social norms, narrative, and movement-building for gender justice.

In 2023, building on its strong track record, AWDF launched Lemlem. This strategic framework guides AWDF’s efforts to advance gender justice for girls, women and gender-diverse people across Africa until 2033. At its core, the strategy focuses on resourcing, nurturing and strengthening those best placed to achieve transformative change: African women’s and feminist groups, organisations and movements.

About the role

Reporting to the CEO, the Director of Partnerships and Voice plays a critical role in developing and implementing the vision and direction for AWDF’s strategies and initiatives related to donor partnerships and resource mobilisation, strategic alliances, and external stakeholder engagement, in full alignment with AWDF’s strategic framework.

In close collaboration with the CEO and the Director of Programmes, she/they will represent AWDF on selected platforms, shape AWDF’s thought leadership and institutional voice,  and promote AWDF’s visibility.

The Director of Partnerships and Voice will manage a small team whose members work effectively together and with the rest of the organisation on fundraising, donor stewardship, partnerships and advocacy, and communications. As part of the Executive Leadership Team, the Director will contribute to strategic direction and management decisions regarding maintaining a healthy, accountable, and efficient organisation.

How to Apply

All applications for this role are managed by Mission Talent. For more detailed information on this vacancy and to apply  please visit https://www.missiontalent.com/openings/awdf-dpv/ 

In 2021, the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), Ford Foundation West Africa, and Open Society West Africa (OSIWA) came together with a shared conviction: that addressing sexual violence in West Africa required more than emergency response. It required a coordinated, feminist, long-term effort to uproot the conditions that make such violence possible. That conviction became the Kasa! Initiative,  a five-year joint programme designed to support women’s rights and feminist organisations on the frontlines of this work across Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal.

The initiative was built on the understanding that sexual violence is both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality. Kasa! worked across multiple levels simultaneously, legal and policy systems, community awareness, emergency infrastructure, and the cultural narratives that normalise and enable abuse. Rather than operating through a single implementing partner, Kasa! chose to invest directly in the ecosystem: funding, accompanying, and strengthening 54 women’s rights and feminist organisations working closest to the communities most affected.

As the Kasa! Initiative draws to a close, we are convening a close-out forum, an opportunity to come together, review what was learned, and honour the work of the organisations and communities who made this initiative what it was.

The forum will present findings from the Kasa! Evaluation, offer a space for partner reflections, and explore the strategies, contexts, and approaches that shaped the initiative’s impact. It is a moment to learn, to share, and to ask: what does this body of work teach us about building feminist movements that last?

We invite partners, feminists, academics, policymakers, and social justice actors to register and join the conversation.

Register for the forum.

For nearly two decades, the African Feminist Charter has served as a vital political framework for feminist movements across the continent. Adopted in 2006, it gave African feminists a shared resource and political framework to identify, build solidarity, and collective struggle.

Twenty years later, the challenges facing African feminists in 2026 are rapidly evolving. Anti-rights attacks, democratic and economic crises, increased insecurity, and overlapping social crises have reshaped our realities in profound ways. Our Charter must reflect that.

As we gear up for the African Feminist Forum 2026 in Windhoek, Namibia, we  have launched a continent-wide process to review the achievements and gaps in utilising the Charter. And to enable feminists to collectively reimagine the Charter in the context of the current and future realities of feminist organising. This is a participatory, community-driven process to ensure this foundational political framework speaks to who we are and what we face today.

This process belongs to all of us. We are calling on African feminists in all our diversities,  across countries, languages, generations, identities, and lived experiences, to contribute to this reimagination.

The survey is available in English, French, Portuguese and Arabic. Please complete it in whichever language you are most comfortable with. Your responses will directly inform the revised Charter and help ensure it reflects the full breadth of African feminist experience.

Access the survey here. Submit by  5 April 2026

Your insights will directly inform a Charter that represents all of us.

On International Women’s Day we reflect on the current moment  facing feminist movements across the continent and  outline three key approaches shaping our work with partners across the continent. 

 

We are living through a moment of profound global upheaval. Across continents, societies are grappling with intersecting crises: genocides and violent conflicts and humanitarian catastrophes, deepening economic inequality, climate shocks, democratic backsliding, and the increasingly coordinated efforts of anti-rights actors to roll back hard-won gains for gender justice. Recent escalation in the SWANA region further exacerbates suffering and inequality amid polarised geopolitics.  

In Africa, these global dynamics intersect with complex regional realities. Conflicts in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and northern Mozambique are displacing millions. From Algeria to Tanzania, increased authoritarianism leads to shrinking civic space and increased restrictions on civil society. From Uganda to Ghana, anti-rights actors are weaponising the legal system to make homophobia institutional. Severe droughts in East Africa and repeated cyclones and floods in Southern Africa are having a devastating humanitarian impact. Everywhere, these crises expose girls, women and gender-diverse people to systemic sexual violence and economic precarity and expose social and gender justice activists to increased surveillance and repression.

For us at the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), marking International Women’s Day in such a context is not a vain ritual. It is an act of recognition, remembrance, and profound respect. Today, we honour the women, girls and gender-diverse people who bear the brunt of the polycrisis. We pay tribute to the feminist pioneers who paved the way through decades of resistance. We celebrate the organisers who put their lives and freedoms at risk to shape gender-just futures for generations to come.

25 years  of  service to the movement

We feel honoured to have journeyed alongside these changemakers for over 25 years. Since 2000, we have awarded over USD 100 million in grants to more than 1,500 organisations and movements advancing gender justice across Africa. Beyond funding, we have contributed to strengthening feminist knowledge, convening spaces for movement dialogue and solidarity, and amplifying African feminist voices in global debates on development, philanthropy and social justice. 

In 2025 alone, we awarded over USD 12 million in grants to partners who challenged discriminatory laws, defended bodily autonomy, fostered women’s leadership and political participation, created new spaces for collective power and political participation, and forged cross-border solidarity that redefines power itself. In Zimbabwe, for example, feminist activists are pushing for stronger legal protections and expanding leadership opportunities for women and girls through advocacy and mentorship. In Chad, feminists are mobilising communities to promote women’s leadership, combat gender-based violence, and create new spaces for feminist dialogue. In the Gambia, we continue to support movements fighting against repeated efforts to decriminalise female genital mutilation. These few examples represent a glimpse of a vibrant and determined feminist ecosystem across Africa.

Harsh realities are forcing impossible choices

This year, we particularly commend African feminist activists, organisations and movements for the extraordinary ways they are responding to multiplying disruptions in a rapidly shifting funding landscape. Across the globe, Official Development Assistance is declining or being redirected (ODA to Africa faced 16-28% cuts in 2025 according to the OECD). Meanwhile, philanthropic funding for gender justice remains a small fraction of overall giving. AWID’s ‘Where is the Money?’ report (2025) revealed stark precarity: 28% of feminist organisations had no budget secured for 2025, 46% had none beyond 2026, and 64% could operate for less than 6 months without external funding. Most grants they received remained short-term, project-tied, and restrictive. Such funding models cannot match the scale or urgency of the work feminist movements are undertaking. 

Yet even under these pressures, feminist movements continue to organise with remarkable creativity and determination. Many are holding the line, ensuring protection, resilience and survival in the face of repression and crisis. Others are making strategic shifts, moving from reactive programmatic responses to collective and proactive approaches that tackle the root causes of inequality. Across movements, we are also witnessing the recognition of care as infrastructure: organisations are centering wellbeing, collective healing and sustainable organising as essential components of long-term feminist power. African feminist movements are not merely weathering the storm of crisis. In many ways, they are a storm in their own right: a powerful force for change reshaping the political, social and economic futures of their communities.  

Yet harsh realities force impossible choices. With limited resources, AWDF partners are having to choose between delivering essential services and advocating for laws and policies, between health and education programmes, or between office rent and staff insurance. Sometimes, funding cuts take away the choice altogether, with the closing of programmes targeting sexual and reproductive health and rights and LBTQI rights, and other issues perceived as contentious.

Defend, Disrupt, Define: How AWDF is meeting the moment

AWDF itself has had to make some difficult decisions in anticipation of funding cuts. We decided to prioritise funding to community-based and marginalised groups, over larger-scale and regional groups. We decided to prioritise grantmaking over some of our other flagship knowledge-building or solidarity-building programmes, and to channel our non-grantmaking programming through the work of the African Feminist Forum. Most critically, we choose depth over scale: resourcing fewer movements more impactfully, because true power builds from strong roots.

We are deepening, not contracting, our work through the bold 3D framework which will guide how AWDF will implement its Lemlem strategy in the next few years. Through our grantmaking, movement-strengthening and thought leadership work, we plan to resource and accompany our partners to:

• Defend hard-won gains, by resourcing and nurturing feminist movements to sustain their impact, to protect and secure human rights, to oppose the backsliding of feminist wins, and sustain the core infrastructure of African feminist movements. This includes expanding resources for feminist groups in underfunded linguistic and geographic contexts, including Portuguese-speaking countries, and strengthening support for feminist responses in crisis and conflict settings.

• Disrupt oppressive ecosystems, by challenging and transforming the narratives, behaviours and practices that hinder feminist movement’s impact, safety and sustainability, thus creating a healthier and more supportive environment for gender justice in Africa. Because disruption cannot happen in isolation, AWDF is working alongside other feminist funds including through the Leading From the South consortium, the pan-African Komboa alliance to counter the anti-backlash, and the Feminist Response Fund, and renewing its partnership with the Equality Fund. At a time when competition for shrinking resources is intensifying, choosing collaboration and solidarity is itself a powerful act of disruption.
• Define visionary futures, by catalysing and supporting innovative, long-term initiatives and providing spaces and opportunities for movements to think beyond resistance and lay the grounds for the feminist realities we want to see in the future. The African Feminist Forum is one of the key spaces for co-creating these futures through strategy sessions and knowledge archives, and we look forward to collectively articulating the feminist futures we want to build when we meet in Namibia in August 2026.

As AWDF Chief Executive Officer, Françoise Moudouthe affirms, “With this 3D framework, AWDF turns crisis into an opportunity to resource African feminists not just to survive, but to lead the long-term transformation we all need. This strategic evolution, shaped by movement wisdom, makes us more impactful, even as we are made to operate at a smaller scale.”

A call to the donor community

In this moment of adversity, we extend deep gratitude to funding partners who have stepped forward with top-up funding, additional flexibility and decreased restrictions. We call on all funders who care about gender justice to fund more and ease the bureaucratic restrictions and risk-averse approaches that hamstring our collective impact. Gender justice can only be achieved if the movements that champion it are provided the space to thrive and innovate, not asked to survive on fragmented, short-term and risk-averse funding models.

As Nana Zulu, AWDF’s Director of Programmes, reminds us, “feminist organising thrives when funding prioritises people, care, safety and collective resilience, and when philanthropy stands firmly with feminist movements even when it appears risky or unpopular. As a feminist fund rooted in African feminist movements, AWDF is committed to deepening long-term support, centering trust over control and adapting to the evolving realities of feminist movements across the continent.”

Especially when funding through women’s and feminist funds, donors should provide multi-year and flexible funding that allows us to resource our partners strategically, not pass on excessive requirements and restrictions. This moment requires supporting programmes, but also to invest in movements’ safety, resilience, healing and infrastructure. It requires philanthropy to stand firmly against anti-rights forces, not shy away from funding politically inconvenient issues.

This is not a call to charity. It is a reminder of our collective responsibility.

On this International Women’s Day 2026, we call on governments, philanthropy and the international development community society to match the courage, urgency and imagination that African feminist movements demonstrate every day. The future of gender justice will be shaped not only by those who resist injustice, but by those who choose to resource that resistance.

 

AFF is a regional political platform that brings together African feminists from the continent and the diaspora to strategise, connect movements, and advance feminist visions for justice and liberation. The forum’s registration is now open and we are calling on African feminists organising in Africa and the diaspora to participate. The registration fee is USD 300. This provides access to the full Forum programme and shared convening spaces but does not include accommodation or travel. The contribution supports the collective hosting of the Forum and enables broader participation.

Following the encouraging response to the Forum announcement, the dates have been updated to allow us to better prepare and welcome participants into a thoughtful and well held space. We appreciate your flexibility and apologise for the inconvenience caused. The African Feminist Forum will now take place from 10 to 12 August 2026 in Windhoek, Namibia.

To hold a politically grounded and collectively safe space, participation follows an application and verification process grounded in shared feminist values.

Who can apply: 

The African Feminist Forum is open to and invites African feminists in Africa and the diaspora in all their diversities. Feminists are expected to apply in individual capacity and not as affiliates/partners of a feminist/gender justice organisation. This ensures that we guard against institutional agenda-setting or the professionalisation of feminist agendas and encourages bottom-up movement-building as a political strategy to inspire collective action.

You do not need to have attended a previous AFF or hold a formal organisational role. Young, emerging and frontline feminists, including those identifying as LBTQI+ and Indigenous, are strongly encouraged to apply.

How to apply: 

To commence an application to attend AFF 2026, submit your application through a form on Canapii. Your submission will be reviewed and a response provided within two weeks of submission. Submitting an application does not guarantee participation, and all participants, including sponsored participants, will be subjected to the same review process.

Following the assessment process, selected applicants will receive registration instructions, payment details and will sign a feminist undertaking and code of conduct.

Click here to access the AFF registration platform.

After almost 20years of dedicated service, Beatrice Boakye-Yiadom, our Programmes Manager-Resourcing Movements, retires today. Throughout her time at the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), Beatrice has played an integral role in shaping and delivering our grantmaking initiatives, building strong relationships with partners like you and advancing our mission to resource, strengthen and uphold women’s rights organisations and feminist movements across Africa. Her passion, leadership and commitment have left a lasting impact on our work and the feminist movements that we serve.

While we will greatly miss Beatrice’s presence on our team, we are excited to celebrate this new chapter in her life and express our deep gratitude for her legacy, which will continue to live on in the work we do and in the strong relationships she has nurtured with our partners, donors and other feminist actors.

“Looking back, the Programme Manager role at AWDF has been far more than a job for me; it has been a vocation and a place of deep purpose. AWDF has shaped my professional life, my values, and my understanding of what feminist resourcing can achieve when it is grounded in trust, solidarity, and accountability to African women and girls.”
Beatrice Boakye Yiadom

While we will greatly miss Beatrice’s presence on our team, we are excited to celebrate this new chapter in her life and express our deep gratitude for her legacy, which will continue to live on in the work we do and in the strong relationships she has nurtured with our partners, donors and other feminist actors.

“After nearly two decades at AWDF, Beatrice has never wavered in her commitment to leading with care. She has taught me, most of us, to welcome change and uncertainty with a calm spirit and a smiling face – in life, and at work. This is a lesson I will never forget. She will certainly be missed.”
Françoise Moudouthe, CEO AWDF

We wish Beatrice the very best and we look forward to celebrating whatever new passions and interests she will be pursuing. We will be reaching out to many of you to gather your thoughts, memories and well wishes for Beatrice, which will be compiled into a special send-off to honour her incredible journey with us.

During this transition period, Lana Razafimanantsoa will provide interim leadership for the Program Manager, Resourcing role. She can be reached at Lana@awdf.org. We welcome any questions or conversations you would like to have regarding this transition. Please do not hesitate to reach out to our Director of Programmes, Nana Zulu, at nanazulu@awdf.org

In alignment with the  African Women’s Development Fund commitment to flourishing, we have identified  key pathways for movement accompaniment and invite African feminist consultants to support us.

We are calling  on you to apply for one or more of the following assignments. Each requires a distinct thematic expertise, facilitation modality and level of engagement.

1. Collective care as Political Strategy: A two day workshop shifting care from individual burden to radical, systemic organizational practice, framing wellbeing as a primary defense against backlash.

2. Digital security and Collective Safety: A four- day in-person training building practical digital security and data protection skills; developing organizational Digital Security Protocols and Cyber Harassment Response Plans.

3. Crisis Response and Preparedness training: A  four-day Feminist crisis response and communication preparedness for organisation facing political, digital or reputational threats.

4. The Research and Advocacy Teach-In: A five-day in person retreat designed as a strategic forge where feminist research meets political action. Here, we will equip partners to transform their lived evidence into the narratives and power required to shape to collective futures. Feminists operating in French and Portuguese speaking contexts.

5. Peer Learning Exchange Programme: Six-month online journey monthly facilitated peer learning circles feminist governance, resource mobilisation, digital security collective care and advocacy.

6. Resilience building Accompaniment: Six -month online programme. A cyclical journey of learning covering advocacy  in hostile spaces collective care and developing organisational Resilience Action Plans.

7. Integrated resource directory and Toolkit: a living and accessible ecosystem of practical tools, contextual knowledge and peer connections designed to strengthen the operational resilience and strategic response capacity of French and Portuguese speaking women’s rights movements.

Application Process

Interested practitioners should submit

1. Technical Expression of Interest ( detailing methodology and pathway(s) for movement accompaniment).

2. Financial Proposal

Send you applications to Consultants@awdf.org by 20th March, 2026.

For more details, find out more in the Terms of Reference.