Category: News

[Below is a speech delivered today by AWDF’s Interim CEO, Theo Sowa at an event held to welcome the musician and activist Nneka Egbuna as AWDF’s Ambassador for the Arts]

We are delighted to have you with us at AWDF this morning to welcome Nneka Egbuna in her role as AWDF’s Arts Ambassador.

AWDF was founded 11 years ago by three inspirational women – Hilda Tadria, Joanna Foster and Bisi Adeleye Fayemi, who was also AWDF’s founding Executive Director until last year. They created an amazing organisation aimed at supporting women organisations in their work to make real change in women’s lives – to ensure the recognition and implementation of ALL women’s human rights (economic, social, cultural, political etc) across our continent. And in partnership with the organisations we make grants to (some of whom are here today) AWDF has achieved some great milestones. AWDF does grant making, capacity building, advocacy and movement building. We have made over 19 million dollars in grants to more than 800 organisations in 42 African countries.

More importantly, we have been able to support some amazing stories of change – for example, the small group of women in Ghana who started baking loaves in a clay oven and have moved from that to setting up a modern bakery with new infrastructure – the profits from which have established a crèche and sponsored neighbourhood children through school; or the project in Ethiopia where on a site visit after a year, positive women who had previously been on the verge of death were transformed through effective treatment of HIV/AIDS, to the extent where they were strong and vibrant, able to afford to buy their own medications without disruptions to the timeline and support their children – all from the seed of a small grant which allowed them to earn and save money from decent, safe labour. Or the women’s shelter in Nigeria, where the women leveraged the money from AWDF to lobby local people and the local government – resulting in the first shelter for women victims of violence in that country, a place where women and their children could go to and be safe in the face of extreme violence. That group was so effective that the Governor of the state not only put money into the building of the shelter, but took on the torch of helping to get other shelters built in other parts of the country.

There are so many stories of change and each of the AWDF staff has different favourites. But one of the lessons learned during this time is that its not enough to change women’s lives project by project – or even policy by policy… That will take too long – and African women, our children and our communities deserve better – deserve change now!

And so AWDF’s Arts, Culture and Sports thematic area was born.

We have learned that it is not enough to talk about international conventions that promote women’s human rights; about international legislation that outlines national responsibilities for the wellbeing of children and communities; about international, regional and national policies that aim to do everything from eliminating poverty to protecting women from violence. These are important discussions to have and the drive to promote, recognise and realise women’s rights is central to the achievement of well being and inclusive development on our continent and throughout the world. Yet despite these laws, these tools, these policies we live in nations where girls continue to have unequal access to education; where women die giving birth at double, triple and quadruple the rates in countries on other continents; where our mothers, daughters and sisters lives are blighted by violence, and where redress and justice can seem distant dreams.

I think that too often our social, economic and political discussions miss a crucial element that is needed to engender true social change – and that is the human element. We can have the most powerful legislation throughout the world – yet if women don’t know about it, how can they use it to change their lives? Just as importantly, real change is not externally imposed. A wise, feminist mother and mentor once told me that true and sustainable change in any area has to be powered by individual, internal understandings and decisions that come together in collective action and movement. So change in our heads, in our hearts, in our beliefs and in our actions…

And the arts can be powerful catalysts of such individual and collective understandings. Artists can produce works that translate dusty words into clear and heartfelt understandings of issues and ways of dealing with them. Art can touch the souls as well as the minds of countless people, inspiring passion, anger, joy and other emotions that can catalyse action in ways that court cases and academic lectures and even protest marches may never achieve. Art can bring information and meaning into lives in ways that can be more real, more grounded and more influential than any number of texts. Arts – traditional or modern – are integral to our cultural lives… and changes in social, economic and political arenas will never truly take root without parallel changes in our cultural norms, beliefs and practices.

Please don’t think that I am saying that we can achieve social change and justice through art alone. We cannot. But we can and must leverage the transformational power of the arts if we are to achieve and to accelerate real social change.

And that is what our Arts, Culture and Sports programme seeks to do. We hope to use the power of the arts and culture to increase public support for women’s rights, to challenge the negative stereotypes of African women; to document women’s lives and contributions and create new, dynamic and more accurate narratives about African women; to raise the profiles of our amazing African women artists and to use arts and sports to mobilise new constituencies – especially of confident, passionate young women activists.

I have seen traumatised children respond and come to life in music workshops; have seen communities that have been fighting for years come together over games of football; have seen the power of film to touch people’s hearts and change their thinking; have experienced writers whose works have changed my life and motivations (including the wonderful Professor Ama Ata Aidoo who is with us today)…

Join us in using arts, culture and sport to accelerate and leverage the change we want to see.

Thank you.

At a hotel in Entebbe this week, I was subjected to an experience that I would not wish upon my worst enemy. I am a recently retired (but not tired) almost 70 year old married mother of two and grandmother of seven. For many years, I have trained and mentored young people in leadership skills and the art of advocacy, particularly in connection with the subjects of Gender and Human Rights. On Tuesday I was invited to facilitate a session on leadership, using the Four Frames of Leadership to a group of sexual minorities. Another facilitator at the meeting was Hope Chigudu. Like me, Hope is a law-abiding married mother of senior citizenship. A few hours into my session, the Hon. Rev. Simon Lokodo—Minister of Ethics and Integrity—walked into the room.

The Minister introduced himself and proceeded to give a lecture on ethics and morality. In addition, he accused the gathering of being an illegal assembly ‘recruiting’ people into homosexuality, even insinuating that we were having sex in the meeting room. Then, in a strange twist of events, the Minister declared the meeting disbanded. Everybody was just told to go home. Kasha Nabagesera, activist and conference Convenor was threatened with arrest, while one of the participants who came from Sweden was challenged to explain how she had even entered the country. Soon after closing the meeting, the Minister was heard telling somebody over the telephone, “Yes, I have just disbanded them.”

Prior to his entry into the meeting, the Minister sent a message to the conference Convenor requesting details of the meeting. The program and all the training materials relating to the conference were sent to him, and the Minister asked to sit in on the proceedings. There being nothing to hide, the Convenor invited him to attend the meeting. Little did we know that the Minister would flare up in anger, make baseless accusations about the gathering and order the meeting closed. I was personally shocked by the action of the Minister, and the level of violent infuriation and intolerance he displayed. For a man of God, I saw no compassion, a great deal of prejudice and an utter unwillingness to listen. The Minister was too angry to hear good sense and simply failed to respond to any pleas for reason, ignoring both myself and Hope.

Reflecting on what happened on Tuesday, it is quite clear to me that the Minister over-stepped all boundaries of rational behavior. But more importantly, he blatantly violated the Law. In the first instance, every Ugandan has the right to assemble, speak freely and to have an education. This was a workshop convened to conduct training in skills that every citizen is entitled to. Secondly, although the Minister even went so far as to make the laughable claim that the gathering could have been planning a military coup or was plotting to disrupt national security, there is not an iota of evidence to support either claim. But I was most shocked that the Minister asserted that the government had all the right and the power to stop any kind of gathering that was taking place anywhere in the country; what a statement of arrogance and unbridled power! I find this wholly unacceptable and unsupported by any provision in the law. It is well known that if a gathering is to be stopped, there must be reasonable grounds to do so accompanied by the relevant legal documents, such as a court instruction or a Police order. The Hon. Minister was in possession of neither.

Tuesday’s actions by the Hon. Minister do not have any support in the 1995 Constitution of Uganda, or in any law known to me. Indeed, as I look ahead to the future Uganda that I want my grandchildren to live and thrive in, it is not the one I witnessed on Tuesday. Impunity comes in many guises; while the fascist actions of that day focused on a small group of activists, there is no telling who the target will be tomorrow. Autocratic government officials like the Rev. Simon Lokodo belong to an era I thought we had left far behind.

By: Dr Hilda Tadria

Thank you for your support to the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF). As of December 2011, AWDF has awarded US$ 19,190,870 to 800 women’s rights organisations in 42 African countries

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) instituted a World AIDS Day programme in 2003 as part of its commitment to combating HIV & AIDS, and in particular the disproportionate effect of HIV & AIDS on African women. To mark World Aids Day in 2011, AWDF is supporting 20 grantee partners in 15 African countries to carry out a range of activities including:

Women in Action Against Gender Based Violence in Cameroun are holding a Voluntary Counselling and Testing service, a route march and a discussion with people living with HIV&AIDS on the benefits of drug adherence and positive living.

Citizen Participation Trust (CP Trust) in Zimbabwe have developed educational material on HIV & AIDS with the goal of intensifying prevention education and facilitating awareness creation on universal access to treatment.

Si Jeunesse Savait (SJS) in the Democratic Republic of Congo are producing radio jingles on the link between violence against women and HIV for dissemination via 3 radio stations in Kinshasa.

The full list of funded grantee partners is as follows:

Funding for women’s rights organisations working on HIV & AIDS is even more critical in the current context of funding cuts by major donor agencies. On this day, AWDF also remembers all those who have lost their lives to HIV & AIDS, and the millions of people affected by the virus.

The following organisations have been supported by the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) to carry out a range of activities in support of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign. Grantee partners for 2011 are:

16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence commences on 25^th November and ends on 10^th December. Globally, women’s rights activists use this period to draw even more attention to the violence that women face on a day to day basis. This year’s theme, From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World: Let’s Challenge Militarism and End Violence Against Women highlights the issue of militarism and its violent repercussions for women and girls.

During this campaign period, AWDF will also join in an international tweetathon alongside its international partners. Follow @awdf01 via twitter for more updates.

“AWDF has been that group that has stood by Women Peace and Security Network since we started…they gave us our first grant, but beyond that you rarely see donors who are concerned about the welfare of an institution, who are concerned about the little day to day things that are happening, who are concerned about the people who run the organisation so I say they walk the talk…the women who work there are fantastic…The Women Peace and Security Network has been in existence for 5 years, and for 5 years AWDF has stood by us.” Leymah Gbowee in an interview aired on ‘Standpoint’, GTV, 28^th October 2011

Watch the full interview here

On Saturday 8^th October, Professor Wangari Maathai was laid to rest in Kenya. There will be an official memorial service for her on 14^th October, giving her country, her many friends and admirers and the rest of the world an opportunity for an official farewell.

The board and staff of AWDF would like to take this occasion to join the myriad of voices across the world that have paid tribute to Wangari in the two weeks since she passed away. The loss of Wangari Maathai means that African women have lost an iconic role model; that Africa has lost a caring and visionary leader; that the world has lost a global citizen of honour and integrity; and that the earth has lost an effective, courageous and unrelenting advocate.

Wangari Maathai’s passion for the environment inspired the planting of billions of trees across the globe. Yet her passion for social justice went beyond her beloved trees and beyond her well known and documented environmental activism. Her vision of social justice encompassed both human and ecological rights. She believed passionately in protecting our environment but her Greenbelt Movement was as much about asserting and advancing women’s rights as it was about reforesting the earth and rebalancing the relationship between humanity and mother earth.

Her fierce intelligence was complemented by a generous and easy warmth that was the foundation of her ability to relate so strongly to the diverse range of people she interacted with: families living in absolute poverty in urban slums or princes surrounded by extraordinary wealth; indigenous communities protecting their knowledge and traditions in the hearts of untouched environments or young people struggling to make sense of their lives in post conflict wastelands; African women changing the faces and fates of their villages or African women changing the destiny of their nations and our continent.

Wangari believed strongly that peace was essential for the true regeneration of the African continent and the preservation of the earth more generally. As the first African woman Nobel Peace Prize winner, she would have been delighted at the news that Africa now has its second and third female Nobel laureates in President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee – and particularly the citation regarding their efforts to promote peace building. The pride and inspiration to African women generated by the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winners echoes that first provided by Wangari Maathai in 2004.

Wangari, the board and staff of AWDF hail your life and your legacy. Our heartfelt condolences go to your family, to the Kenyan nation and to African women everywhere. We pledge ourselves to join with the millions of people in Africa and across the world who will work to ensure your legacy is honoured. You will not be forgotten.

Rest in Peace.

By the African Women’s Development Fund

The Executive Board and Staff of the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) extend their heartfelt congratulations to Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia; Leymah Gbowee, Executive Director of WIPSEN/Member of the African Women Leaders Network for Reproductive Health and Family Planning (AWLN), and Tawakkul Karman, Human Rights activist, for being joint awardees of the Nobel Peace Prize 2011 “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work”.

This award is a significant recognition of the efforts that all 3 women have made to create sustainable peace in their respective communities. As Africa’s first democratically elected woman Head of State, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is a powerful symbol for women’s leadership on the African continent and beyond.Leymah Gbowee, through her tireless mobilisation of community women across religious and ethnic lines, first in Liberia and then across West Africa, signifies the power and impact of building movements for women’s rights, peace and democracy.

Theo Sowa, Interim CEO of AWDF states, “I am delighted that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman have been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2011. This is especially important for all of us that work on women’s human rights and peace building. This is a great boost to women’s rights activists everywhere.”

ENDS

Press Enquiries

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah (AWDF Programme Officer for Communications)

Tel: +233 302 521 257 (Ghana)

Email: nana@africlub.net/awdf

Website: www.africlub.net/awdf

In 2008, the Centre for Widows and Children Assistance (CWCA) in Tanzania received a grant of US$10, 000 from AWDF. This grant enabled the group to do training on women’s land rights for local government leaders, widows and youth in Kisarawe district

Discrimination against women through customary law prevails in Tanzania, particularly in the regions where land is fertile, productive, and a scarce commodity. Since land in the areas of Kilimanjaro, Kagera, Mara, Dodoma, and Iringa is a highly valued resource (because of cash crop production) it remains under male control and is distributed through patrilineal inheritance practices.

In general, customary law prohibits women’s land ownership or entitlement, but allows them to work on the land, provided they give all profits to their husbands. CWCA Executive Director Utti A. Mwang’amba noted that when the one-year training programme funded by AWDF started, there were only four women representatives in the 7 village land councils in the pilot villages. That situation has now changed and all the 7 village land councils have a minimum of 3 women representatives as required by the law. In areas like Kibuta, women now chair these councils. Currently, women chair three out of seven village land councils.

Presently, men are unable to sell a plot of land without the consent of their wives. A 70-year-old woman won a land dispute case at the high court even though she lacked legal representation. CWCA provided coaching to her on how to present her case in the court. The copy of the court ruling was provided as evidence and a copy was given to the AWDF monitoring and evaluation team. [1]

AWDF’s grant to CWCA enabled the organization to attract more donors including the KIOS Foundation, which meant that the legal education program could be extended to cover ten wards in the country. Additionally, the Foundation for Civil Society in Tanzania provided funding to develop a manual of Statues/Acts in the local language to be used by the village land councilss to enable them understand the law and make good judgments.

CWCA also benefited from a consultancy contract from Concerned Worldwide to train ward tribunals in three districts. In all 721 were trained in women’s land rights. This also led to some women legalizing their marriages as it has an impact on the sharing and owning of property. Documents available also indicate that most women are now able to speak publicly and participate actively in their communities.

Through AWDF’s support the organization has also trained 60 local government leaders, women, youth, representatives of disability and HIV&AIDS groups from Kisarawe district. The training focused on issues of application of customary rights of orphans and land dispute machinery (composition of courts dealing with land issues). The training sought to enlighten the trainees on the procedures for hearing of cases, making judgments and record keeping.

By: Ewurama Nyarkoh

Communications Intern

Philanthropy in Africa has become an area of increasing interest in the past 10 or more years. A key focus for interrogation is the manifestation of philanthropy in the African context – its areas of strength and weakness. Another is how to build on the traditions of philanthropy in Africa to attain stronger institutional processes that scale up localized forms of giving and ground these in principles of social justice, equality, peace and sustainable development. Africans are challenging the notion that Africa is purely a ‘donor recipient’ continent and instead are pointing to the rich traditions of giving and philanthropic practice in Africa – which in many instances have been the mainstay of entire communities.

Whilst it is known that philanthropy is an age-old practice in Africa, there is little recognition of the contributions it has made in developing and sustaining communities. In Africa today, much of the giving takes place in familial and informal community networks responding often to immediate/ welfare concerns. Burial societies, individual support to the payment of school fees and, building of community facilities are examples of philanthropy that can be found in many variations on the continent. Religious organizing has also formed a critical avenue for much of the more formal and institutionalised mechanisms for philanthropy, with programmes driven by local actors providing a range of services including education, health services and feeding programmes.

More recently, a number of African philanthropic actors and organisations seeking to address social, economic and political inequalities and disparities have emerged[1]. In addition there has been an increase in the number of high net worth individuals in Africa establishing their own, more formalised philanthropic initiatives and organizations. At the same time, the private and corporate sectors in Africa are increasingly developing corporate responsibility programmes. These developments have raised the visibility of philanthropy in Africa, highlighting its critical role in our societies and communities. Initiatives such as the African Grantmakers Network- a network developed by African grant makers to promote and strengthen philanthropy in Africa- are testament to the shifts in thinking and organisation on the continent. Increasingly Africans on the continent and elsewhere are seeking to make a difference as collaborative and organised donors to the kinds of change they wish to see.

This is both evident and urgent within the feminist movement. The role of women within the growing field of philanthropy in Africa- their contributions, successes and challenges – remain largely undocumented and unrecognised. Yet the establishment of organizations such as the African Women’s Development Fund and Urgent Action Fund –Africa amongst others, has concretised the central nature of African women’s participation and influence in philanthropy, especially social justice philanthropy.

Within the feminist movement, there is a growing body of thought on the need for us as women to fund our own movements. This partly reflects an increasing unease with external donor practice in support of short term, project based approaches- which do initiate some change, but which are in the long term difficult to sustain, since often they can only address symptoms, and not root causes. Mounting pressure to demonstrate immediate results or face the risk of losing funding has driven many to develop projects that are all SMART but have little in the way of substance and relevance. Many in the feminist movement point to the need for a different type of organizing. Organising that builds strong social movements of women and institutions who are able to define their own agenda and develop appropriate responses that encompass the breadth and depth of women’s realities on the continent, and that holds the state and other duty bearers accountable for their commitments to women’s rights. This approach suggests a shift from regarding our constituencies as beneficiaries to working with them as active and autonomous citizens. This requires also long term investments, risk taking, being bold and having an understanding that occasionally being unclear is as good as it gets!

In as much as there is a hunger for a different approach to funding, there is also recognition within the feminist movement that it is women in Africa and elsewhere who will have to pioneer it. Globally, women’s funds have emerged as critical players and investors in feminist movements worldwide. Increasingly feminist organising is interrogating the disjuncture between their movements and their sources of funding and are responding with internally driven processes for generating income. Many organisations are evolving wide ranging strategies including schemes such as workplace giving, development of social enterprises, endowment building, and individual or collective regular donations to feminist organisations, campaigns or initiatives. In Africa women have begun to recognize themselves and one another as an untapped resource base to support the movement on the continent. They are seeking ways in which to engage the high net worth and middle class African women who have thus far been rendered largely invisible in the global discourse on finance and resourcing for gender equality.

This is not to let traditional donors off the hook. As 50% of the global population and as contributors to the wealth created on a global scale, women have a right to an equitable share of development resources. This needs to be acknowledged and promoted as a priority on women’s rights, development and philanthropic agendas. However, there should also be recognition that women are exercising a new kind of agency – one that gives rise to a new source of power within, to truly own their movements, agendas and issues. This is an exciting time for the feminist movement in Africa. Our wealth has been and continues to be our passion, commitment, solidarity, and contestation. This provides new opportunities for learning and growth, creativity, knowledge and increasingly, our money and economic security. We are challenging the dominant development narrative that depicts us as passive recipients of external aid to one in which we are the active agents of the change we envision. We are putting our money where our hearts are……….

Sarah Mukasa

Director of Programmes, AWDF

Sarah Mukasa is Director of Programmes at the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF). Her interest in philanthropy has been informed by over two decades of work with African women’s rights organizations in Africa and the Diaspora.