Réseau des Femmes Leaders pour le Développement
RFLD combines legislative advocacy, community organising, re-granting, and open-data tools to advance women's rights, SRHR, civic space, and climate justice across Africa.
Under our Afrofeminist Initiative for Human Rights Development in Francophone West Africa, RFLD selected and now sub-grants ten women-led organisations, €20,000 to €25,000 each, for six months. Every grant is paired with a mandatory programme of organisational strengthening, so the funding and the capacity arrive together.
Meet the ten grantees →Trusted, recognised and verified
RFLD brings 670 member organisations into a shared agenda. Members exchange evidence, run joint advocacy and receive direct sub-grants for work they design themselves.
Meet our members +RFLD exists for one outcome, gender equality across the African continent. An Africa where women and girls, Vulnerable Groups and people with disabilities exercise their rights fully, take part in the decisions that affect their lives, and live free from violence. Everything we raise and re-grant moves the continent closer to that outcome.
RFLD gives a funder one trusted way to resource the organisations closest to African women. We move flexible funding straight to grassroots groups and donate the management systems that carry them through donor due diligence, so the resources and the capacity to use them arrive together. Around that, we run the open, continental data that lets the whole movement work from shared evidence. The opportunity is compounding: every gift strengthens organisations that keep delivering long after it lands.
Women and girls, Vulnerable Groups and people with disabilities facing rights violations. We train, mentor, protect and connect them so they can claim their rights, take up leadership and access services.
Women-led grassroots organisations across the continent. We move resources directly to them, donate the management systems they need, and wrap both with technical support and peer learning.
Policymakers, funders, researchers and continental institutions. We reach them through open data anyone can use and through advocacy anchored in our ACHPR observer status.
Continental in scope across all 55 African Union member states, with our deepest operational presence in francophone West Africa and the Sahel, the corridor we know best and reach furthest. Six offices anchor the work: Porto-Novo and Dakar as our francophone hubs, Accra as our Africa Office, Banjul as our ACHPR liaison, Lagos as our Nigeria office and Igolo as our member and local platforms base in Benin, with direct programmes running in 15 or more countries.
Continental reference tools that civil society, journalists and parliamentarians use to build their own campaigns. Treaty trackers, governance hubs and a free online course for francophone human rights defenders.
The WAFF Fund moves resources directly to member organisations, with a fast channel for defenders under threat. The Africa Grant Portfolio opens this to all 55 AU states. The Organizational Resilience Program donates a full offline, bilingual management suite to a first cohort of 500 organisations, as an in-kind grant.
The DƆNÙESÈ Data Center holds twelve free tools with no login and no fees, in English and French. If a community organiser in Yaoundé or a parliamentarian in Nairobi can use it, that is the point.
Five programmes on the ground: political leadership through PAWELE, safety and health through BRAVE, land rights and climate resilience, maternal health, and the work to end FGM and child marriage in francophone Africa.
The four functions turn one another. Programmes generate evidence, evidence feeds the tools, the tools shape advocacy, and re-granting moves the resources so grassroots organisations reach further and last longer. This is the flywheel.
Multi-year general operating support for the four-function model and the four registered offices, so the whole system keeps running.
Support for grassroots re-granting through the WAFF Fund and for the Organizational Resilience Program, so resources and systems reach more organisations in more countries.
Funding aligned to the community-delivered programmes, so direct service to women and girls continues at scale.
We are building a diversified base with no single funder providing more than a third of our resources, and a reserve that covers three months of operations, so the work holds when any one funding cycle ends.
"Strategy first, resourcing second."
Six offices across the continent
She who comes is bound to those who came before.
Hear the network
Women's Rights
Human Rights
DEVELOPMENT
Women's Rights
Human Rights
Women's Rights
Our members live and work in the communities they serve. Every programme starts from their priorities and answers to them.
We move flexible funding and management systems to women-led groups that large donors rarely reach directly.
We carry evidence from the ground to the African Commission, regional bodies and national parliaments, and we follow up on every commitment made.
Our work organises across six substantive fields of community-rooted delivery — anchored in the African normative frameworks (the African Charter, the Maputo Protocol, ACDEG, the AU Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality, Agenda 2063) and aligned to the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.
Community mobilisation and continental advocacy for sexual and reproductive health and rights through the BRAVE Programme. Maternal health, contraception, safe abortion services, and comprehensive sexuality education — anchored in Maputo Protocol Articles 8, 9, 12 and 14 on gender equality, bodily autonomy and the empowerment of women and girls.
Women Human Rights Defenders protection, civic space monitoring, and continental advocacy through the ACHPR Working Group on Human Rights Defenders. Strengthened democracy, human rights, rule of law and reduced corruption. Safe migration, refugee and IDP protection — with particular attention to women, children and ethnic minorities. Implementation of the African Charter, the Maputo Protocol and the ACDEG.
Climate adaptation, biodiversity protection and sustainable resource use — improved resilience to climate change and environmental disasters; access to renewable energy and improved energy efficiency. Gender-responsive budgeting, women's land rights and the care economy. Open, inclusive and sustainable trade, regional and continental economic integration, food security.
Women's political leadership via the PAWELE Programme. ACDEG implementation and legislative tracking across West Africa. Increased gender equality and women's full participation in decision-making — political influence and economic empowerment. Young people's meaningful participation in political decision-making, in society, and in continental advocacy — Africa is the youngest continent, more than 60 per cent under 25.
Women's inclusion in peace processes, regional dialogue, and conflict prevention across ECOWAS and Sahel contexts. Strengthened regional initiatives and capacity for sustainable peace — early warning systems, mediation, peacebuilding and resilience. Support for the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and the AU Continental Results Framework on Women, Peace and Security. Focus on the regions of greatest vulnerability.
Community-led abandonment of female genital mutilation and child marriage. Survivor-centred advocacy and intergenerational mentorship. Maputo Protocol Article 5 implementation. Cross-border community engagement where practice and migration overlap. Centred on the dignity and bodily integrity of African girls and the meaningful participation of young women in shaping the work that affects their lives.
Through NAFASI, RFLD works with partners to keep women human rights defenders safe online and to push for fair digital policy across the region.
Explore NAFASI +
Community dialogues are where laws on paper become rights that women can claim. Our members lead these conversations in local languages, village by village.
See our impact +
Each RFLD programme reports against the Sustainable Development Goals it serves, so partners can follow a grant all the way to a change in women’s lives.
View key projects +
RFLD tracks how states implement the Maputo Protocol and helps women’s organisations hold their governments to the rights already signed.
Read about the Protocol +Every contribution moves through a network that is audited, NGOsource 501(c)(3) Equivalent, and accountable to the communities it serves — with the majority of funds directed to field activities.