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Our Programmes · RFLD · The institutional shape of African feminist organising
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Strategic Plan 2023–2028 · An afro-feminist programme of workOur Programmes

Six fields.Four flagships.One African feminist architecture.

RFLD is the institutional shape African feminist organising has built for itself — combining the laws African women fought for, the communities African women hold, the resources our movements deserve, and the open knowledge our scholars demand. Six integrated fields. 35+ African countries. 670 women-led organisations.

Our Six Feminist Fields Download 3-Page Profile (PDF)
Programme Delivery · 2025
Funds managed$1.77M
To field85%
Member orgs670
Countries35+
NGOsource 501(c)(3) Equivalent
US Public Charity Equivalent
ACHPR Observer Status
African Union · Human Rights
GIZ / BMZ SEA-T
2026 Council Co-Chair

RFLD is a pan-African feminist network, born in francophone West Africa and organised across the continent. We refuse the colonial division that separates the law from the community, the data from the movement, and the resources from the women whose labour produces the freedoms we measure. We hold four functions together that most institutions keep apart: public policy infrastructure, grassroots re-granting, open knowledge tools, and direct community organising.

The integration is the politics. The DƆNÙESÈ Data Center — its name held in the Fon language of our founding community — produces the evidence African scholars and African journalists ask for. That evidence feeds our continental policy hubs, which feed our programmes, which feed the WAFFF Fund, which moves resources to the 670 women-led organisations that are not implementing our policy — they are the policy.

Born in 2013 and rooted across Senegal, Ghana, Benin and The Gambia, RFLD carries the institutional credentials the African feminist movement needs in the rooms where decisions about African women are still made without us: ACHPR Observer Status, the NGOsource 501(c)(3) Equivalency Determination, and African civil society co-chairship of the GIZ/BMZ SEA-T Council in 2026. The credentials are not the work. The work is the work.

The four functions we hold together

Policy Infrastructure

Continental policy hubs co-produced with African feminist scholars and grassroots constituencies — Maputo Protocol · ACDEG · AU Mechanisms · West Africa Legislative Platform · Francophone Human Rights MOOC.

Grassroots Re-granting

Money moved to the women doing the work — WAFFF Fund · Africa Grant Portfolio · urgent-response support for African women defenders when patriarchy comes for them.

Open-Data Movement tools

African feminist knowledge as a public good — DƆNÙESÈ Data Center · African Digital Safety Compendium · Maternal Health · Gender-Responsive Budgeting · Climate Action Platform. Open, citable, trilingual.

Direct Programmes

Community organising at the continental scale — PAWELE · BRAVE · Climate Justice · Health in Francophone Africa · Ending FGM and Child Marriage.

§ The ground we organise on

The continent is moving fast.

The conditions African women organise within shift every year — colonial extraction, climate disruption, fundamentalisms old and new, capital flight, the politics of borders. Our work moves with the conditions because the women we organise with do.

Women and girls

Where patriarchal violence concentrates — and where we organise

Patriarchal violence against African women and girls is not background context — it is the daily ground on which African feminist organising stands. Gender-based violence, child marriage, the deliberate underfunding of African women's health, the criminalisation of African girls' education in too many places. BRAVE, our work to end FGM and child marriage, and the Maternal Health Data tools are how we refuse those realities at continental scale.

A young continent

A continent in the hands of young African women

More than 60 per cent of the African continent is under 25. Young African women are not the future of African feminism — they are its current organisers, theorists and street-level strategists. PAWELE is built to carry the African women's political lineage forward across generations; our intergenerational governance keeps young African feminists at the table where their work is decided.

Migration & displacement

African women in motion — and the defenders who follow them

African women move — pushed by conflict, climate disruption, and the economic structures we did not design. African women migrants, refugees and internally displaced sisters carry the deepest exposure. The Defender Security Movement toolkit and our urgent-response work follow the women whom borders, smugglers and patriarchal violence put at risk.

§ Six feminist fields

Where African law meets African community — and African data meets African organising.

i.

SRHR · DSSR

Bodily autonomy as African feminist movement work. Sexual and reproductive lives defended by African women organising for African women — Maputo Protocol Articles 8, 9, 12 and 14 carried into community reality. No African woman asks permission for her own body.

Movement-rooted flagship
BRAVE Programme
ii.

Civic Space

Refusing the shrinkage of African civic space — on the street, in the courtroom, online. African women defenders organise everywhere African states would rather they did not, and we organise alongside them.

Movement tool
African Digital Safety Compendium
iii.

Defending African Women Defenders · Peace & Security

The defence of the African woman defender is the defence of African civil society. Relocation, legal accompaniment, encrypted communications, the sisterhood of urgent response — and the continental Women, Peace and Security work that names African women as the architects of the peace they survived to build.

Movement practice
Rapid response · WPS agenda
iv.

African Economic & Climate Justice

African women hold the soil, the seeds, the markets and the care. The economic and climate justice we organise begins from that fact and refuses its erasure — gender-responsive African budgets, the land rights of African women farmers, the climate adaptation African women are already leading.

Movement-rooted flagship
Climate Justice Programme
v.

African Women in Power

Carrying forward the African women's political lineage — from the Aba women and Yaa Asantewaa, from the women's wings of the independence movements, to the contemporary African women legislators reshaping democratic practice. PAWELE is how that lineage gets transmitted, with ACDEG and West African legislative tracking as the working tools.

Movement-rooted flagship
PAWELE Programme
vi.

Ending FGM & Child Marriage

The dignity of the African girl child is non-negotiable. Survivor-centred, community-led abandonment of FGM and child marriage — led by African daughters, mothers, elders and the African women survivors who refuse the practice for the generations after them.

Movement practice
Community dialogue + policy
§ The African feminist legal lineage

African instruments. African enforcement. Our laws, our movement.

Our continental work is anchored in African legal instruments — written by African jurists, ratified by African states, and given content by African feminist organising. We are not importing rights frameworks. We are demanding African states do what their own signatures committed them to.

2003

Maputo Protocol

The African feminist legal instrument. The Maputo Protocol is what African women won — Article by Article — and what African women now demand African states actually domesticate, not merely sign.

African feminist anchor
Maputo Protocol Hub
1981

African Charter

The continental human rights charter African states made for themselves. Articles 9, 10 and 13 are the civic-space ground we organise on. Article 62 is the state-reporting cycle we hold them to. RFLD engages under ACHPR Observer Status N°553.

African feminist anchor
AU Mechanisms
2007

ACDEG

African democracy on African terms. The ACDEG codifies the democratic norms African states adopted; the ACDEG Hub is the African civil-society watchtower that holds them to it — built by African scholars and African feminist analysts.

African feminist anchor
ACDEG Hub
2015

Agenda 2063

"The Africa We Want" — Aspiration 6 names African women and African youth as the people whose potential the continental project depends on. We organise to keep that aspiration honest.

Continental anchor
2004

SDGEA

The Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa — the public commitment African Heads of State made to African women, and the commitment African feminist organising holds them to in the years between summits.

AU commitment
2018

WPS Continental Framework

The continental Women, Peace and Security framework — the indicators against which African states report their treatment of African women in conflict and in the peace that follows. We organise to make those indicators truthful.

WPS continental anchor
§ African women in the peace architecture

African women in the African peace architecture.

African women have always been peacemakers — in the markets that conflict closes first, in the villages that displacement empties, in the courtrooms where impunity is fought. Our peace and security work supports the African actors and structures that prevent, manage and resolve conflict — early warning, mediation, peacebuilding, the patient work of post-conflict accountability.

We organise where the women African violence hits hardest live — the Sahel, the Lake Chad basin, the Liptako-Gourma cross-border zone. African women's leadership in conflict resolution, peace processes and post-conflict reconstruction is the point. Young African feminists carry the lineage forward.

Our work supports the institutional shape of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and the African actors who carry it — cross-border women's organising in conflict-affected zones, the AU Continental Results Framework on WPS, the African peace process leaders who refuse to be tokenised at the table.

AU Peace and Security Council (PSC)

African feminist submissions naming what African women carry in continental peace and security questions.

ECOWAS Centre for Gender and Development

West African women coordinating regional peace work on their own continental terms.

Sahel regional dialogue

African women crossing the borders the colonial powers drew — building peace where the Sahel is being un-made.

Early warning & civic-space monitoring

African feminist civic-space monitoring across 37+ countries — published openly, named in the languages our communities speak.

§ Four flagships, community-rooted

Community-rooted.
Continental in reach. African in authorship.

PAWELE
Field v

Women's Political Leadership

Carrying the African women's political lineage forward — policy literacy, governance fluency, electoral skill — across francophone and anglophone Africa. PAWELE is how the next generation of African women legislators get prepared.

Explore →
BRAVE
Field i

SRHR & DSSR

African women's bodily autonomy as movement work. BRAVE organises African women community leaders on SRHR and defends the right of every African woman to decide for her own body.

Explore →
Climate
Field iv

Climate Justice Programme

African women hold the land, the water, the seeds. The Climate Justice Programme resources African women's leadership in adaptation, demands gender-responsive African climate finance, and refuses the climate extraction African women have already paid for.

Explore →
Health
Field i

Health in Francophone Africa

African women's health, organised on francophone African terms. Maternal health, the end of malaria, and SRHR delivery — refusing the global health frame that arrives in English and leaves francophone African women under-resourced.

Explore →
§ DƆNÙESÈ — African feminist knowledge as public good

African feminist knowledge.
Open. Trilingual. Built for the movement.

Twelve open tools maintained by RFLD as African feminist public goods. Verified, citable, downloadable. Knowledge belongs to the African movements that produced it — not to the development agencies that catalogue it.

Pan-African

AU Mechanisms Demystified

African civil-society guides to the AU — written by African feminists who have done the navigation themselves.
Governance

ACDEG Hub

African civil-society watchtower on the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance.
Women's Rights

Maputo Protocol Hub

Tracking African states' compliance with the Maputo Protocol — the African feminist legal instrument.
Digital Safety

African Digital Safety Compendium

Continental African reference on technology-facilitated violence against African women defenders.
Francophone

Francophone Human Rights MOOC

Francophone African human rights learning platform — built for grassroots African feminists.
Economic Justice

Gender-Responsive Budgeting

African gender-responsive budgeting tools — refusing the fiscal politics that pretend African women are absent from the accounts.
Legislation

West Africa Legislative Platform

The only consolidated database of women's rights legislation across ECOWAS — built by African feminist analysts.
Health

Maternal Health Data

Francophone African maternal, newborn and child health data — published openly, named in French.
Health

Ending Malaria

African feminist data on malaria — gender-disaggregated, openly licensed.
SRHR

My Health, My Right

Francophone African SRHR rights-literacy platform — for African women claiming what is already theirs.
Climate

Climate Action Platform

Gender-disaggregated African climate data — built so African women can hold their states to the climate commitments African states signed.
Reference

RFLD Countries Data Center

Country-by-country African gender and rights indicators across 35+ African nations — the continental ledger African feminists insisted on.
§ The global frame

African feminist work in the global development frame.

The 2030 Agenda, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the Paris Agreement are the global frames African states signed up to. We organise to ensure those frames carry African women's priorities — not the other way around.

01
No Poverty
02
Zero Hunger
05
Gender Equality
07
Clean Energy
08
Decent Work
10
Reduced Inequalities
11
Sustainable Cities
12
Responsible Consumption
13
Climate Action
14
Life Below Water
15
Life on Land
16
Peace & Justice
17
Partnerships

Our work touches SDGs 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 — and the financing commitments African states made for themselves at Addis Ababa and Paris. The global frame is a tool. African feminist organising is the politics.

WAFFF Fund · Re-granting

Moving the money to the women doing the work.

The West Africa Francophone Feminist Fund (WAFFF) moves resources from institutional donors to the grassroots francophone African women's collectives organising the actual work — feminist movement-building, defender protection, the daily refusal of patriarchal violence. Resourcing the grassroots is not a delivery mechanism. It is a transfer of power.

Explore WAFFF Fund
Moving the money
African women-led organisations
Francophone West Africa
Plus the Africa Grant Portfolio and urgent-response support for African women defenders when patriarchal violence comes for them.
§ Accountability to the movement

Accountable to the movement first.

Our accountability runs first to the 670 African women-led organisations that constitute our network, and second to the donors who resource the work. In 2025 we moved $1.77M across 35+ African countries with 85% of every dollar reaching field organising. Audits, safeguarding and compliance documentation are open to partners on request — because African feminist transparency is not a brand position, it is movement practice.

Global Compliance Standards

NGOsource 501(c)(3) Equivalency Determination opens direct US philanthropic flows to African feminist work. Registered in four African countries — Senegal, Ghana, Benin, The Gambia.

PSEAH Safeguarding

Survivor-centred safeguarding against sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment — protecting African women staff, grantees and the communities our network serves. No tolerance for patriarchal abuse inside the movement.

External Auditing

Annual independent audits, published openly to the network. African feminist accountability runs both ways.

AU Recognition

ACHPR Observer Status · seat on the Working Group of the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders — African presence at the continental table where African women's rights are decided.

§ The work in motion

From policy to community.

RFLD advocacy event in West Africa RFLD community outreach with women defenders RFLD continental conference
§ Where we organise

Four offices.
35+ countries of active delivery.

Rooted in francophone West Africa, organised continent-wide through 670 African women-led member organisations.

Founding home

Porto-Novo

Benin · Francophone anchor
West African organising

Dakar

Senegal
Africa Regional

Accra

Ghana · Anglophone anchor
Continental advocacy

Banjul

The Gambia

African feminist organising across: Benin · Burkina Faso · Côte d'Ivoire · The Gambia · Ghana · Guinea · Guinea-Bissau · Liberia · Mali · Niger · Nigeria · Senegal · Sierra Leone · Togo — plus regional engagements across the African Union's 55 member states through our policy hubs.

§ Move resources to the work

Resource the work.

RFLD welcomes institutional partners, philanthropists and individual sisters across the diaspora who are ready to move resources into the long-term work of African feminist movement-building. Funding the African feminist movement is not charity. It is solidarity.

Move resources to the work Request the due-diligence pack

RFLD · The institutional shape of African feminist organising · 2023–2028 · NGOsource ED · ACHPR Observer · GIZ/BMZ SEA-T Co-Chair 2026 · rflgd.org