Who We Are

“An evolving consciousness of our ways of being in the world is as important as the work itself.”

We are a pan-African rapid response Fund committed to transforming power relations by resourcing African women's human rights advocates, and their formations as an act of solidarity.

With deep and expanding knowledge, experience, and skills in the contexts in which advocates live, organise and work, the Fund is alert and agile in responding to the priorities and urgent needs of African women’s rights activists and movements thus ensuring holistic security, safety and well-being, movement building and strengthening using feminist philanthropic principles and values.

Our collective staff speak forty-six African dialects, enhancing our linguistic infrastructure, which allows us to facilitate critical conversations with the right people when it counts the most.

The virtual work structure with anchor offices in Kenya and Zimbabwe and the rest of the team spread across fifteen African countries facilitates how we show up in agile, dynamic, and grounded ways, centring our feminist values, diverse socio-cultural backgrounds, and multi-disciplinary teams.

In our work to power urgent actions by women’s rights advocates, we target the ideas and narratives that perpetuate oppression, the systems of oppression, and the supporting institutions. The change we seek is importantly focused on five key actors:

Society

We believe that favourable conditions enable women's rights advocates, their organisations, and movements to support and sustain themselves, their work, and each other better.
Movements

Movements act on a shared commitment to strengthen urgent actions and co-create cultures of care, justice, and equity.
African Women’s and Girls' Human Rights Advocates

AWGHRAs can better access and use resources to support and sustain themselves, each other, and their work during and after urgent situations.

Our Mandate

We are a part of the ecosystem of women’s rights movements in Africa and globally.

UAF-Africa advocates for funding partners to understand, commit to, and actively invest in pan-African women’s rights activism and urgent situations requiring rapid response deployment.

Our Vision

We want an Africa and world where transformative justice is a shared goal so that all African women in all kinds of bodies, realities, and identities are recognised for their full worth and value, live to their fullest potential, are healthy and live in harmony with the earth and with fellow human beings.

Our Mission

UAF-Africa works to support women's rights advocates, particularly in the women’s rights movements, in their actions, which enable them to support and sustain themselves, support each other and their work before, during and after urgent situations.

Our Expertise

Our area of expertise is our deep and ever-evolving knowledge, skill, and experience in:

The contexts in which women's human rights advocates live, organise, work, and do their activism
Urgent situations and urgent action
Healing Justice- Integrating Collective Care and Protection
Pan-African and Feminist Philanthropy
Movement building and strengthening

Collectivity and shared leadership

We share decision-making and power because the collective is central to living a whole and meaningful life. Change happens through collective and co-creation as much as it happens on a personal level. Within this shared leadership, we are deeply conscious of our power as a large, regional institution that can influence donors and mobilise and distribute funding.

OPENNESS, KNOWLEDGE & LEARNING

We are aware of and celebrate knowledge, learning and wisdom. We bring these values into UAF-Africa. Those we work with are experts and specialists in their areas of work. There is much for us to learn from our partners and friends.

CROSS MOVEMENT AND INTERSECTIONALITY

We seek out, embrace, and welcome all women committed to creating change for and with women and the African continent. This means that women of all bodies and identities, from all geographies, and with a range of dis/abilities are an integral part of who we are and how we move through the world. Further, we work with and across issues and identities as these are all interconnected and expressed as the daily lived realities of women.

Our Sister Funds

Urgent Action Fund Africa – Founding

Urgent Action Fund – UAF was founded in 1997 following the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. The co-founders identified a severe gap between activists’ needs in the face of crises or unexpected opportunities and the resources available to them, especially in areas experiencing armed conflict or escalating violence. Most donors required several months to process a grant request, but many interventions had only a tiny window of opportunity to be effective.

Many of UAF’s Rapid Response Grants went to womn’s rights groups in conflict-affected areas of Africa. UAF consulted with activists throughout Africa, and the Board established a local presence in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2001. Urgent Action Fund Africa became Africa’s first rapid response Fund and the first women’s Fund in Kenya.

In 2002, the Fund received its first grant of $100,000. Since then, UAF-Africa has mobilised funds from a broad base of international and increasingly local donors committed to advancing women’s rights and feminist agendas in Africa. Over the years, we have had continuous reviews of our internal procedures and policy, which is essential to ensure that we are making our grant applications seamless.

The Rationale for Rapid Response Grantmaking

The lack of better, rapid, and more flexible funding for women’s movements in Africa indeed was and continues to be a problem for African women’s human rights defenders, and advocates. Some funding organisations would only review grant applications once every six months, a criterion that was ineffective in conflict and urgent situations requiring urgency and agility.

The fundamental aim of establishing Urgent Action Fund Africa was to support women’s work in Africa through unique initiatives that better support and respond to the needs of African women in conflict and urgent situations.

As a pan-African rapid response Fund, our values are what we have strived to uphold since inception, as this is what matters to us and defines what kind of organisation we are. Proudly, we boast of our strategic presence in Africa’s five sub-regions: East Africa, North Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa and West Africa, responding to requests and processing grants within 48 hours.

Our Grant-making themes

We recognise that issues are all interrelated and cross-cutting. Those applying for grants may use one or more categories and themes—whatever best describes their initiative. These themes are simply a guide on possible language to name the issues. It is based on our own grant-making trends analysis.

PEOPLE

Peace and Political Participation: Some issues here may include the democratisation of society; participation, accountability and transparency in states and corporations; confronting authoritarianism, dictatorship, fundamentalisms and fascisms; defending defenders; co-creating and building peace; promotion and advancement of holistic human security, women’s health and wellbeing; addressing violence against women, gender-based violence, militarism, conflict and nuclear threat; advancing women’s right to bodily autonomy, integrity, freedom and dignity; sexual and reproductive health and rights; confronting patriarchy and heteronormativity.

POWER

Social and Economic Power: Some issues here may include building women’s economic independence, self-sufficiency and autonomy; equity and fairness in access to resources; distribution and redistribution of wealth; ethical livelihoods; income security; economic citizenship and participation; addressing the capitalist crises and promoting feminist and people-centred economies; economic justice; challenging extractive economies and industries; eradicating poverty and economic inequalities; access to housing, basic needs, services and resources; division of labour.

PLANET

Natural Resource Governance and Stewardship: Some issues here may include environmental and climate justice; access to land, energy, minerals, and water; access to livelihood assets; food security; confronting environmental exploitation, degradation and the climate crisis and catastrophe.

Entering The Feminist Future and Navigating The Barriers

In the last few decades, African women’s place, location and position in society have shifted. We have pushed, encouraged, nudged, and even forced society to take us seriously. This has happened in our households and families, the community, the workplace, education, health systems, and by both state and non-state actors. We are an unstoppable force and have been gathering momentum. We have continued to rise, build space, expand our movements, raise our voices, and strengthen the visibility of our work and organising. We have done this work within feminist and womn’s spaces and worked with other movements to advance women’s leadership in broader struggles of which we are an integral part.

Amidst the numerous challenges in society, we continue to open space, expand our base, generate hope and inspiration, and co-create the world we want to live in. We also recognise the need to grapple, now more than ever, with the challenges within our movements such as relational weaknesses and gaps, barriers to systemic change, and the politics of money—to resource our organising, work, and activism. We are deeply conscious of the terrible impacts (on us all individually and collectively) of the reality that too many of us have not taken care of our health and well-being as we do our movement-building work.