In short: French-speaking Africa is underfunded, and it is women and girls who pay the price. Women’s rights organisations receive around 1% of gender-focused aid, and the share is smallest in francophone Africa. That is why RFLD, a network of 1,143 women-led organisations in more than 35 countries, funds grassroots women’s groups, builds open data, takes their evidence to the African Union, the African Commission and ECOWAS, and runs community programmes on health, economic justice, harmful practices, social justice and climate justice. We are raising US$14 million for 2027 to 2029 to close this gap.
A gap you can measure in women’s lives
French-speaking Africa is where women’s rights funding is thinnest, and women and girls pay for it first. Across the continent, women’s rights organisations receive around 1% of gender-focused official development assistance, according to OECD DAC data reported by AWID. In francophone West Africa and the Sahel, the share that reaches small, women-led groups is smaller still.
The reasons are practical. Many funders write their calls in English, ask for systems that small groups do not have, and prefer partners they already know. The organisations closest to women work in French, Fon, Wolof, Mooré or Bambara, and they rarely receive flexible money. Mainstream philanthropy and data tools are thinnest exactly where the need is greatest.
The laws are not the problem. 46 of the 55 African Union member States have ratified the Maputo Protocol on the rights of women in Africa. Benin adopted laws in 2021 on gender-based violence and on sexual and reproductive health. Burkina Faso revised its Family Code in 2025. On paper, rights are moving.
In practice, a woman who is refused care, cut, married as a child, pushed off her land or harassed online for speaking up still meets closed doors. Rights won on paper stay fragile when no one is funded to make them real. That is the gap the Réseau des Femmes Leaders pour le Développement (RFLD) exists to close.
What the gap sounds like
Behind every funding figure there is a woman making a choice she should not have to make. Our member organisations hear these choices every week, in markets, health centres and village meetings across French-speaking Africa.
A young mother in a rural district walks for hours to a health centre that has no midwife on duty that day. She goes home and gives birth without skilled care, because the service that could have stayed open was never funded beyond a six-month project.
A girl of fourteen is told she will be married after the harvest. The women’s group in her village knows the law forbids it, but has no budget for transport to the gendarmerie, a lawyer’s fee or a safe place to stay.
A widow farms the plot her husband farmed for twenty years. When he dies, his family claims the land. She has no papers, and the local association that helps women register land has run out of money.
A woman who spoke at a town hall about violence against women opens her phone to find threats, edited photos and her home address shared online. She stops speaking in public.
When we brought women, lawyers and health workers together in Porto-Novo on 22 October 2024, it was the participants themselves who named stigma and disinformation as the main reasons Benin’s law on safe abortion is not applied. Women know what blocks them. What they lack is organisations with the means to act on what they know.
To protect the women we work with, we do not publish their names or photos without their written consent. The situations above reflect what our members report, not the story of one individual.
What exactly RFLD does
RFLD connects the village to the African Commission. We are a pan-African Afrofeminist network of 1,143 women-led member organisations in more than 35 African countries, with registered offices in Benin, Ghana, Senegal and The Gambia. Our deepest presence is in West Africa, the Sahel and French-speaking Africa, the corridor where mainstream support is thinnest.
The gap is not one problem but three connected ones. States sign treaties but do not apply them, because no one brings the evidence and pressure that hold them to account. So women cannot claim their rights, and those who speak up are attacked, more and more online. And the women’s groups closest to them carry it alone, with little flexible money and no systems donors trust. Fixing one level alone does not last, so we work on all three: individuals and communities, grassroots organisations, and systems and policy.
We work through one operating model with four functions that feed one another:
- We fund grassroots women’s organisations. We re-grant money to small, women-led groups and help them build the systems donors require. Between 2023 and 2025 we re-granted about US$3.1 million, including €250,000 to ten organisations in francophone West Africa in 2025.
- We build open data. Our public platform offers twelve free, bilingual tools covering all 55 African Union member States, with no login and no fees, including the Maputo Protocol Hub, which tracks the Protocol in every member State.
- We take evidence to decision-makers. We have held Observer Status N°553 at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights since 2017, and we carry what communities tell us into regional policy.
- We deliver programmes with communities. We work on women’s political leadership, protection and access to services, maternal health, land rights and climate resilience, and ending female genital mutilation and child marriage.
The golden thread is simple: our data proves where rights fail, our grants fund the women’s organisations that fix it, and our advocacy makes States answer for it. Funding RFLD funds the whole chain, from the village to the African Commission, with programmes in more than 15 countries.
The proof is in results. Since 2013, our work and that of our members has reached 9.78 million women and girls. Since 2020, RFLD and its members have contributed to 13 national laws and policies in eight West African countries, among them Benin’s laws 2021-11 and 2021-12, Senegal’s law 2020-05, Sierra Leone’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Act of 2022 and Burkina Faso’s revised Family Code of 2025.
Our systems meet the standard of bilateral donors: three consecutive unqualified audits, grants published on IATI and an NGOsource equivalency determination that allows US foundations to fund us directly.
The first women’s rights repository of its kind in Africa
Advocacy needs evidence, and for years African women had to borrow it from others. So we built our own. The RFLD Data Center is the first repository of its kind in Africa: twelve free, bilingual data tools on women’s rights in all 55 African Union member States, with no login and no fees.
Policy hubs
- Maputo Protocol Hub: where every AU member State stands on ratifying and applying the Protocol on the rights of women in Africa.
- AU Mechanisms: a guide to the African Union’s institutions, from the Commission and ECOSOCC to the African Court, so women’s organisations know where and how to press their case.
Country data
- West Africa Legal Scorecard 2026: women’s rights laws compared across 15 West African countries.
- Country law profiles: the women’s rights laws of all 55 countries, our newest tool.
- West Africa Legislative Platform: following the laws that shape women’s lives in the region.
- Women in Leadership Tracker: where women sit, and where they do not, in decision-making across 55 countries, with a directory of African women leaders.
Learning
- Académie francophone (MOOC) in French.
- RFLD Academy in English.
- Academia do RFLD in Portuguese.
Journalists, researchers, parliaments and grassroots groups use these tools to write shadow reports, brief decision-makers and hold States to their word. Built by an African women’s network, they put the evidence in African hands. Open the Data Center.
Five areas where the gap hurts most
Our work is organised around five justice outcomes. Each one answers a specific way in which underfunding shows up in women’s lives.
Health: mothers who survive and choose
In French-speaking Africa, our health programme works to improve maternal health and to make sexual and reproductive health rights real. In Benin, RFLD and its members contributed to law 2021-12 on sexual and reproductive health. We now train community organisations to answer disinformation about safe abortion quickly and accurately, so that women are not pushed toward unsafe procedures by rumours.
Economic justice: land, income and the right to decide
A woman without land or income cannot leave violence, pay for care or keep her daughters in school. Our land rights and climate resilience programme helps women secure access to land, and our re-granting gives women-led organisations the flexible money that lets them support women’s livelihoods on their own terms.
Ending harmful practices: female genital mutilation and child marriage
We run a dedicated programme to end female genital mutilation and child marriage in French-speaking Africa, and we mobilise communities, religious and traditional leaders against harmful practices more broadly. Laws such as The Gambia’s ban on female genital mutilation, upheld in 2024, only protect girls when communities and services apply them.
Social justice: leadership, protection and safety online
We train women who run for office, support women human rights defenders and help them stay safe, including online, where abuse is now one of the most common ways women are silenced. The African Commission’s Resolution 591 has called for a continental study on digital violence against women, a sign that the threat is now recognised at regional level.
Climate justice: resilience for those who feed the continent
Women farmers are among the first to lose harvests to drought and floods, and among the last to receive climate finance. Through our climate action platform and our land and resilience work, we help women’s groups adapt, secure land and take part in the decisions that shape local climate plans.
Working with the institutions that decide
Community work changes lives one village at a time. Regional institutions change the rules for millions. RFLD works at both levels, so that what women say in their communities reaches the people who set policy and budgets.
- African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR). We hold Observer Status N°553 and sit on the Support Group of the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. At each ordinary session we bring evidence from our members, present statements and organise panels on the protection of women human rights defenders. Read our report on the 89th Ordinary Session.
- African Union Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC). ECOSOCC is the African Union’s door for civil society. We use it to carry the voice of grassroots, francophone women’s organisations into AU deliberations, where they are rarely heard.
- African Union Women, Gender and Youth Directorate. The Directorate leads the AU’s gender agenda and the follow-up of the Maputo Protocol. Our Maputo Protocol Hub tracks ratification and domestication in every AU member State, data that supports this follow-up.
- ECOWAS and its gender structures. West Africa is our first delivery ring. We engage ECOWAS on women’s rights, gender-based violence and the protection of defenders, with evidence drawn from the 15 ECOWAS member States.
The logic is simple. Our open data shows where rights fail. Our grants fund the women’s organisations that respond. Our place at the regional table lets us turn their evidence into commitments, and their commitments into laws, budgets and services that women can use.
The ask: US$14 million for 2027 to 2029
We are raising US$14 million for 2027 to 2029. It is built to close one gap: the distance between the rights African women have won on paper and the rights they can actually use. Every dollar goes to one of four outcomes for which RFLD holds itself accountable.
The plan follows the structure of our funding model, built from what we want to achieve at each level rather than from the money we already hold:
| Budget line | Share | About (US$) | What drives growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community programmes | 43% | 6.0 million | More women reached per country each year, fully funded country programmes in Benin, Ghana, Senegal and The Gambia first, cost per participant held flat |
| Re-granting and organisational resilience | 32% | 4.5 million | More organisations funded each year rather than bigger grants, so small and new groups can still apply |
| Open data and policy | 10% | 1.4 million | Tools kept up to date, continental policy hubs, presence at every African Commission session |
| Core costs | 15% | 2.1 million | Finance, compliance, data and governance across our four registered offices |
Each outcome below draws on these lines.
| Outcome by 2029 | What the funding pays for | How we will know |
|---|---|---|
| Grassroots women-led organisations are stronger and better funded | More re-grants to small groups, the management systems donors require, training in finance and safeguarding | Number and value of grants; organisations passing donor due diligence |
| States move from ratifying the Maputo Protocol to applying it | Open data on every AU member State, country advocacy, submissions to the ACHPR and the AU | Laws, budgets and services adopted; scores in the Maputo Barometer, next edition 2027 |
| Women human rights defenders are better protected, online too | Protection support, digital safety, regional advocacy on reprisals | Defenders supported; regional commitments on digital violence |
| Women in programme communities gain leadership, services and land and climate security | Programmes on maternal health, ending FGM and child marriage, land rights and climate resilience, political leadership | Women reached; services used; land secured; women in decision-making roles |
Re-granting is one of the fastest-growing lines of the plan. We know how to do it well: we already move money to grassroots groups with due diligence, safeguarding and sanctions screening, and we report it publicly.
Why now? Laws already won, from Benin to Burkina Faso, will stay fragile if no one funds their application. Women defenders will keep paying the price of advocacy alone. And the organisations that reach millions of women will stay dependent on short project grants that end just as results begin to show.
What we ask for is multi-year, ideally flexible support for the whole chain, with core costs priced in. To stay independent, we plan for no single funder to provide more than 30% of our income. We invite foundations, bilateral agencies, pooled feminist funds, family offices and individual donors to join this plan, as core funders, as programme partners or by supporting one country or one outcome.
Join us
The women of French-speaking Africa do not need to be told what their rights are. They need the organisations that stand beside them to be funded long enough to make those rights real. RFLD has the network, the systems, the data and the seat at the regional table to do it. What we need now are partners who will close the funding gap with us.
To discuss a partnership, book a 45-minute call or visit our work in Benin, Ghana or Senegal, write to admin@rflgd.org. Press enquiries: communications.info@rflgd.org.
Sources
- RFLD impact data and audited accounts, 2013 to 2025.
- RFLD Maputo Protocol Hub, African Union treaty status, 2026.
- OECD DAC data on gender-focused aid, as reported by AWID.
- African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Resolution 591.
