Category: News

Watch Dr Funmi Olonisakin, Executive Director of the African Leadership Centre (ALC) in Nairobi, Kenya speak about the paucity of leadership on the African continent, and how the ALC through its fellowship programme is developing training young Africans for leadership within their communities and in the continent.

Since 2010, the African Women’s Development Fund has supported the ALC with US$130,000 in grant making. This funding has included supporting African women participating in ALC’s peace, security and development fellowship programme, research on governance, peace and security as well as supporting the development of ALC’s ICT platform.

Theo Sowa, AWDF’s Chief Executive Officer participated in the 2013 Women Deliver conference held in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia between the 28th-30th of May 2013.

On Tuesday the 28th, she delivered ‘The Last Word’ for proceedings on the day which can be viewed below:

On Wednesday 29th May Theo Sowa facilitated a panel on ‘Developing Countries’ Strategies Towards Reaching the FP2020 Goals’ with Dr. Kesetebirhan Admasu, Minister of Health, Ethiopia; Matia Kasaija, Minister of State for Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Uganda; and Dr. Mojisola Odeku, Director, Nigerian Reproductive Health Initiative.

On Thursday 30th May, Theo Sowa was a resource person on a panel discussion focused on ‘The Development Agenda Through a Woman’s Lens’

Between the 27th of May-7th of June, a team of AWDF staff visited grantee partners, and potential grantee partners in Lagos, Ibadan, Ile-Ife, Ilorin and Abuja.

The images below represent a photo essay of some of the grantees and potential grantees visited. All photography by Chika Oduah.

 

In the last ten years the number of organisations seeking to raise funds in the South has grown rapidly. There has also been a dramatic increase in the numbers of civil society organisations whilst funding patterns have altered significantly. International donors have been decentralising funding decisions to their regional offices and increasingly funding via Southern governments. Private foundations and International NGOs have also decentralised, and there have been shifts in thematic and geographic focus for aid. Social enterprise, corporate social responsibility and private/public partnerships have all been on the rise. In some cases international NGOs are starting to compete for local funding with indigenous NGOs as they seek to expand beyond their crowded home markets. In all of the countries where this is happening there is a huge shortage of professionally trained and experienced fundraisers. Training which is available tends to be brief, not systematic or sustained, and of variable quality and appropriateness. The lack of professionalism in fundraising creates problems for NGO credibility.

Since 2008, AWDF has supported a minimum of 100 women leaders from grantee organisations across the continent to the International Workshop on Resource Mobilisation (IWRM) organised by the Resource Alliance UK and with administrative support from AWDF. The primary aim of the IWRM is to provide an opportunity for people who work in the not-for-profit organisations to receive training in practical fundraising skills and other aspects of resource mobilization such as writing grant proposals. It also focuses on helping delegates to diversify their funding base to become more sustainable and less reliant on donor grants.

This year AWDF will convene thirty (26) fundraisers from grantee organizations in Kampala in May in a practical workshop on the development of a resource mobilization strategy document. The development of this strategy document forms a critical part of grantees’ effort at mobilizing resources for their organizations. And as part of AWDF’s core mandate of ensuring sustainability of women’s right organisations, it is important that we put in place measures that will move grantees to the next level of developing funding strategies in support of their resource mobilization efforts especially after sponsoring these organizations to the IWRM and GIMPA courses.

In this workshop, AWDF will be targeting about twenty-six (26) fundraisers from grantee organizations who have been trained at the IWRM and GIMPA but have not been able to develop a resource mobilization strategy document. Participants will be drawn from organisations from grantee organisations who have participated in the IWRM or GIMPA courses.

Positive Action for Treatment Access, (PATA) has been an AWDF grantee since 2006. PATA works to ensure that every individual with an illness or disease, especially women and girls, have access to treatment, as well as equitable and humane care. AWDF’s most recent support to PATA has included funding a monthly radio programme addressing a range of issues on gender based violence on Eko 86.76Fm in Lagos.

On Saturday 25th May, PATA’s radio show dealt with the issue of rape, which included a lively phone in when the public called to share their thoughts, comments and questions around rape and sexual violence. The resource persons for this edition included Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, AWDF’s Communications Specialist, and Bose Ironsi, the Executive Director of Women’s Rights and Health Project in Nigeria. In conversation with Olabisi Omidire, the show’s hostess, the resource persons explained the definition of rape and clarified that rape is always about power and control. A myth which the resource people continuously rebuffed was the notion that the way a woman dresses could in some way lead to her being sexually assaulted.

As part of the radio programme, a short drama produced for PATA by Omololo Olubode was also aired. Click below to listen to the audio.

An Omololu Olubode drama produced by PATA

 

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) is a Pan-African grant making foundation based in Accra, Ghana. To date, AWDF has provided grant-making, capacity building and technical assistance to its network of over 1000 grantee partners in 42 African countries. In Nigeria, AWDF has supported 123 women’s rights and national organisations with over US$2.7 million in grant making. Grantee partners have included the following:

 

Project Alert on Violence Against Women – ‘Project Alert’ has been a grantee partner since 2003, and has benefited from US$177,800 in grant making. This has included supporting the building of ‘Sophia’s Place’, a shelter for women survivors of violence; capacity building support in fundraising and financial management for ‘Project Alert’ staff, as well as the delivery of a 6 month capacity building project on gender based violence for faith based organisations in Lagos State.

 

Ajegunle Community Project (ACP) – Since 2007, the Ajegunle Community Project has received US$77,500 in grant making. This funding has including supporting the training of women politicians, as well as professional development training for women seeking to take up leadership in public office. The Project Manager for ACP also benefited from attending a ‘Certificate Course in Resource Mobilisation’ organized by AWDF in conjunction with Resource Alliance (UK) and the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration. ACP credits this resource mobilization training for its current success in fundraising from the corporate sector.

 

Women Against Rape, Sexual Harassment and Sexual Exploitation (WARSHE) – WARSHE has received US$109,000 in grant making since 2003. The organisation provides psychosocial, financial and legal support to survivors of violence. A huge part of WARSHE’s work has involved educating young people about violence against women and young girls, as well the steps one can take if you have suffered from gender based violence.

 

Monitoring and evaluation visits are an essential part of AWDF’s work, and enables the organisation to engage directly with grantee partners, offer direct technical assistance, learn about key issues affecting grantees and women in the community, region or country, and is invaluable for tracking the success and impact of the work being done by African women’s organisations.

Demonstrate leadership, be inclusive, recognise the power vested in grantmakers, and build African narratives.

These were the 4 key themes that emerged from a meeting of social justice philanthropic organisations convened by Trust Africa in October, 2012.

Read the PDF of the full report by clicking the link below:

Final Report: Developing a collective framework and agenda to advance social justice philanthropy in Africa and the Arab region

We the undersigned participants at a strategic meeting on Women’s Economic Empowerment and Livelihoods, held in Cape Town on 3-4 May under the auspices of the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), wish to communicate the following key messages from our deliberations to the World Economic Forum-Africa meeting “Delivering on Africa’s Promise”, 8-10 May 2013

 

We welcome the new positive image of “Africa Rising,” and stand proud of the achievements of the continent’s women and men against overwhelming odds. As partners in the efforts to ensure that Africa’s growth is sustainable and is in the interest of the continent and its peoples, we wish to bring to the attention of this meeting, the following concerns in the hopes that they will form a part of the deliberations:

 

We remain sceptical that real progress for Africa’s one billion people—the majority of whom are women–will change radically through policies centred unremittingly on markets and profits, and based predominantly on the extraction of mineral resources. African people’s needs and interests—particularly those of women—are not part of this narrow economic vision. As African women, we are only too aware that:

 

 

1. From colonialisation to globalisation, African women have been brutally marginalised from Africa’s economic activity. The colonial economic model, which dominates “development” planning to this day, deliberately destroyed indigenous African systems of production, which were based on careful custodianship of our natural resources for present and future generations. As a result, African women’s economic contribution, skills and knowledge have been devalued and relegated to the “informal economy.” The result has been that even now, economic growth and the so-called “promise of Africa” have had little relevance to the vast majority of Africa’s women.

 

1. Women’s wealth in Africa has been intimately tied to traditional forms of communal resource ownership in which communities have evolved equitable and sustainable systems of wealth creation and distribution. These same communal systems have protected and enriched Africa’s greatest assets: a natural heritage second to none, with abundant water, forest and land based resources, as well as bounteous plant, marine and animal life. The definition of Africa’s wealth and economy in limited terms of GDP obscures the true value of the continent’s real capital.

 

1. The fuel of Africa’s economic growth and development is its food system. Food systems in Africa rely on indigenous local products.The 2010-2011 report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation on ‘The State of Food and Agriculture’[1] indicates that in Africa 50-80% of agricultural labour is provided by women. Africa’s primary food security systems are at threat from the process of relentless land degradation, dispossession, privatisation and large scale land grabs. Furthermore, these local food production systems are threatened by the loss of women’s indigenous knowledge necessary to preserve our rich ecosystems, seeds and animal biodiversity. However, women farmers are being driven out of the food economy under the relentless drive towards exclusively large-scale commercial agriculture. The impact of these approaches to our environment and to our complex ecosystems cannot be stressed enough. It is time for urgent action now.

 

We urge African political and business leaders participating at the Regional Africa World Economic Forum 2013 to broaden their understanding of an “emerging Africa” beyond extractive industry driven GDP. A balance must be struck between nurturing real African economies—where we “produce what we consume and consume what we produce”—and slavishly aligning our production systems to the requirements of external powers. As African women, we wish to end the cycle of exclusion and marginalisation that has characterised Africa’s location in the global economy, and our participation as citizens within it.

 

As a group of African feminists, women’s rights and social justice activists passionate about the realisation of the rights of all Africans we commit ourselves to work with women, decision makers, business people and thought leaders across the continent to reimagine and work towards Africa’s transformation guided by principles of sovereignty, self-determination, equity and justice.

 

Signed:

African Women’s Development Fund (Regional)

African Women’s Economic Policy Network (Uganda)

Biowatch (South Africa)

Busia Community Based Services (Kenya)

Economic Justice Network (South Africa)

Gaia Foundation (International)

Grassroots Organisation Operating Together in Sisterhood (Kenya)

Land Access Movement of South Africa (South Africa)

Positive Women’s Network (South Africa)

Rural Women’s Movement (South Africa)

SOS Addis (Ethiopia)

Surplus People Project (South Africa)

Tanzania Gender Network Program (Tanzania)

The African Biodiversity Network (Kenya)

The Association of Uganda Professional Women in Agriculture and Environment (Uganda)

The Mupo Foundation (South Africa)

Wheat Trust (South Africa)

Women and Resources in Eastern and Southern Africa (Zimbabwe)

Women’s Leadership and Training Programme (South Africa)

 

Press Enquiries

 

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah (AWDF Communications Specialist)

Tel: +233 302 521 257

Email: nana@africlub.net/awdf

Website: www.africlub.net/awdf

 

Between 2001 and 2012, the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) disbursed US$4,247,740.24 in grant-making to women’s rights and national organisations across the African continent. The majority of this funding has supported small community based women’s groups like Ngallu Djiguene in Senegal which in 2005 received a grant of US5,000; Anfoega Kaolin Processing Group which in 2006 received a grant of US$5,000 and SOS Addis in Ethiopia which in 2012 received a grant of $20,000.

Support provided by AWDF has enabled African women to live more dignified lives. Beneficiaries of AWDF’s grantee partners tell us that support for economic security has enabled them to sustain livelihoods, educate children and pay medical bills. Take Denise Adebiyi for example who has benefited from the work of Association Femme et Vie (AFV) in Benin. In November 2012, Denise shared with an AWDF monitoring and evaluation team how ARV’s micro credit scheme enabled her to invest in her vegetable farming business. She also participated in the literacy programme run by the organisation. This has helped her improve the quality of her business as she can now read and write in the local language. According to her, the living conditions of herself and her family has changed drastically and her profit base has also increased considerably.

 

In spite of the support that AWDF and other partners give to women like Denise it is clear that much more needs to be done to create more equitable societies where African women have fair access to economic resources, capital and food security.

As part of AWDF’s efforts to share learning amongst individuals, organisations and experts working on issues of economic empowerment and livelihood, on the 3^rd and 4^th of May 2013, the organisation will bring together researchers, policy makers, donors and grantee partners for a strategic meeting on ‘Economic Empowerment and Livelihoods’ in Cape Town, South Africa. The theme for this meeting is ‘Equity, Power and Livelihoods’. In the context of renewed international attention on economic growth in Africa, it is important that the economic empowerment of women is recognised as central to women’s equality and crucial to broader development goals such as economic growth and poverty reduction.

 

 

 

 

The ‘Creative Centre for Communication and Development‘ (CCCD) based in Zimbabwe is a grantee partner of the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF). CCCD specialises in utilising information and communication technologies (ICT) to advance women’s human rights. In 2010, CCCD received a small grant of US$1,000 to use mobile phone advocacy to educate the public on Gender Based Violence (GBV) in Zimbabwe. In a 2011 narrative report to AWDF, CCCD stated that they chose this method of advocacy because “1 in 3 people in Zimbabwe have a cell phone” and that “subscribers can send 20 SMS messages locally for the cost of US$1”. As part of the ‘Mobile Fone Campaign’, CCCD utilised the ‘Freedom Fone application software’ (free open source software) to provide round the clock information on GBV. This included developing 5 audio interactive voice menus which also provided information on types of GBV, advice on leaving violent relationships and details of who to contact when you need help. CCCD recieved information via the ‘Freedom Fone’ about a case in which a man had raped his daughter who had consequently become pregnant. Participants in the programme met and decided to create a drama piece to highlight this issue, and in turn raise awareness about this form of Violence against Women (VAW). This performance was enacted in churches within the Bulawayo community and led to more women providing testimonies of their own experiences of GBV. This campaign coincided with a case that received prominent international attention – the story of a father from Argentina who raped his daughter for 30 years and had 10 children with her – and for this reason spurred the interest of local Zimbabwean media in CCCD’s drama performance and campaign.

In 2011, CCCD trained 25 women and girls on digital story telling. This method was chosen because it enables women through their own voices to share their experiences with the world. Below is a story by Sayamika:

Sayamika Chinyamunyamu

Capacity Building is an integral part of the support AWDF gives grantee partners and CCCD has benefited from a number of opportunities designed to help the leadership and staff strengthen the work they do. In October 2011, Gertrude Pswarayi , the Executive Director of CCCD participated in AWDF’s ‘2nd CEO Forum’ held in Nairobi, Kenya where she delivered a presentation on ‘How CCCD is using social media to advance women’s rights’. Please see presentation below:

Creative Centre for Communication and Development

In November 2012, AWDF provided support for a member of CCCD staff to attend the ‘International Workshop on Resource Mobilisation’ held in Uganda. The learning acquired from participating in this programme is proving beneficial in the development of CCCD’s fundraising strategy.

CCCD’s most recent grant from AWDF was for US$20,000 to support institutional development over the next 3 years. This includes development of a strategic plan, financial management and corporate governance training for board and staff as well as a contribution towards the recruitment of staff. The grant also enabled CCCD to strengthen its communications work, and in March 2013, CCCD launched its new quarterly newsletter, ‘Stories of Change’.

CCCD Newsletter_January _ March 2013