Dear allies,
The partners who choose to engage with feminist movements in francophone Africa over the long term tend to share a posture. They listen first. They read the reports we publish. They ask questions that suggest they have been thinking about our region before the call began. They come with a multi-year, flexible, trust-based architecture — not because it is fashionable, but because they have understood that movements are not projects, and that the conditions of feminist work require infrastructure, not just deliverables.
This newsletter is our public way of saying thank you, in the simplest words we have. We owe you our gratitude, and we owe you the honesty of naming what your trust has made possible.
“Solidarity is not a posture; it is an architecture. The partners who build it with us — quietly, year after year, in francophone Africa — are the reason this movement is still standing. We see you. We thank you. And we will keep building, together, what comes next.” — Dossi Sekonnou Gloria AGUEH
What you have made possible
You have not funded projects. You have funded the conditions under which feminist movements in francophone Africa can keep doing the work. That is a different, harder, more meaningful thing.
You have funded:
- The grassroots organisations that receive our re-grants and operate in places where international funding rarely arrives directly. Through the WAFFF Fund and our regional sub-granting facilities, your resources reach the local women-led organisations who already know what their communities need.
- The defenders who carry out women’s rights work in contexts where doing so is dangerous — across the Sahel, in conflict-affected regions, in countries where civic space has narrowed.
- The convenings that move our network from isolated points of light into a coordinated continental architecture.
- The data infrastructure that turns the experience of African women into evidence that parliaments, courts, and policy-makers can act on — including our DƆNÙESÈ Data Center and the Francophone Hub.
- The institutional foundation that allows RFLD to take continental commitments seriously: the four entity offices, the integrated policy suite, the audited finance, the safeguarding architecture, the team that holds it all together.
To the 670 member organisations of our network, to the women human rights defenders walking through closed civic space at risk to themselves, to the grassroots feminist organisations receiving our re-grants and turning them into change in their villages, to the young feminists building the next generation of movements in francophone Africa — you are why partnerships like the ones described above exist. The funders chose to engage with RFLD because of your work. We are simply the intermediary that gets to channel the resources to where they belong.
Looking forward
To those of you who are reading this and considering whether your foundation, your agency, or your personal philanthropy might engage with feminist movements in francophone Africa: the door is open. The architecture is here. The grassroots movements have been here, all along. Come and build with us.
With gratitude, and with the seriousness this moment deserves,
Dossi Sekonnou Gloria AGUEH Africa Director RFLD — Réseau des Femmes Leaders pour le Développement
🔗 http://www.rflgd.org · ADMIN@RFLGD.ORG
RFLD is a pan-African feminist network with operational presences in Porto Novo, Accra, Dakar and Banjul. We hold ACHPR Observer Status N°553 and are certified as a US 501(c)(3) Public Charity Equivalent by NGOsource.
Our work is delivered across 35+ African countries through legislative advocacy, community organising, re-granting, and open-data tools.
