RFLD will take part in the Africa Philanthropy Network Assembly 2026 in Accra with a delegation of ten representatives, led by Mary Norkai Dowuona, RFLD Regional Executive Lead. RFLD is also sponsoring delegates from francophone African organisations so that French-speaking movements have a seat at a gathering that shapes how African philanthropy grows.
An assembly for African giving
The Africa Philanthropy Network (APN) brings together grantmakers, civil society organisations, diaspora networks and development partners who want philanthropy in Africa to be led from Africa. The network has held an Assembly every two years since 2010. It was first known as the African Grantmakers Network and took its current name at the Arusha Assembly in 2015. Each Assembly is a moment to take stock of what African communities give, how they give it, and what stands in the way.
The 2026 Assembly takes place in Accra, Ghana, from 3 to 5 November 2026, with a field visit on 6 November. Accra is also home to the RFLD Africa Office, our headquarters. For our team, the Assembly is a gathering on home ground, and a chance to welcome partners from across the continent to a city where we work every day.
The programme follows a simple arc over three days. Day one, Adopt, looks at homegrown ideas, values and models as the foundation of African philanthropy. Day two, Advance, asks how to deepen, scale and invest in what already works across the continent. Day three, Amplify, is about reclaiming and raising the voice of African philanthropy. Each day combines a plenary opening, community dialogues held in parallel, harvest circles where participants share what they heard, and a panel or plenary discussion.
The Assembly sets out four objectives: to facilitate dialogue on best practices and challenges in adopting new approaches, to showcase strategies and tools that advance innovation within organisations, to explore methods to amplify impact at local, national and global levels, and to foster collaborations that move the field from adoption to amplification.
Who is going
The RFLD delegation counts ten representatives. It is led by Mary Norkai Dowuona, RFLD Regional Executive Lead, who coordinates the work of the RFLD Executive Office across our offices in Ghana, Benin, Senegal and The Gambia. Mary brings to Accra a close knowledge of how RFLD runs its grants and its governance, and of what it takes for a pan-African network to keep its promises to its members.
The delegation will follow the three days of the Assembly, take part in the community dialogues, and meet funders and peer networks. Delegates will share what RFLD has learned from regranting to grassroots women’s organisations, from publishing open data on women’s rights, and from building tools that organisations can use without paying for them.
Alongside its own team, RFLD is sponsoring delegates from francophone African organisations, one from each of six French-speaking countries. RFLD covers their participation so that cost is not the reason a French-speaking organisation misses the conversation. We are not publishing the names of the sponsored organisations. Some of them work in contexts where visibility carries risk, and RFLD never names or shows a defender at risk without her written consent.
Why francophone presence matters
African philanthropy is often discussed in English. Calls for proposals, reporting templates, panels and networks tend to work in English first. The organisations that pay the price are those that work in French or in Portuguese. They are often the closest to the communities they serve, and the furthest from the rooms where money is allocated.
RFLD’s report Funding Feminist Movements in Francophone West Africa: 2026 Data, published on 4 October 2026, puts numbers on this experience. It covers eight countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. It finds that funders tend to focus on English-speaking and East African initiatives, and that calls and reporting in English keep many French-speaking groups out before they even apply.
The report also shows how thin the margins are. AWID’s 2025 study found that the median feminist organisation worked with US$22,000 in 2023. A 2022 study commissioned by the Agence française de développement found that 64.4% of feminist organisations surveyed in the Global South had annual budgets under €50,000, and 57% had no institutional funding at all. Myriad USA reports that African-led organisations receive less than 2% of global philanthropy. An Oak Foundation scoping report found that more than 58% of funds intended for Africa still pass through Western intermediaries.
Francophone organisations face a double gap. They feel the global fall in aid, and they also face cuts from their closest partners. Our report notes that France’s aid to women’s rights organisations fell by 71% between 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, according to Focus 2030. Civic space is narrowing at the same time: in October 2026, the CIVICUS Monitor rated five of the eight countries covered by the report as repressed.
An Assembly that wants to shape the future of African philanthropy needs these organisations in the room. They know how communities in the Sahel and on the coast give to each other when outside money stops. They know what it costs to keep a shelter or a legal clinic open on goodwill. Their experience belongs in the commitments the Assembly will adopt.
What RFLD brings to Accra
RFLD is a pan-African network of 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 African countries. We were founded in 2012 and have been working since 2013. Our Africa Office is in Accra, with Francophone Hubs in Dakar and Porto-Novo. We hold Observer Status with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (N°553). In Senegal, the Government has granted RFLD status as an International Organisation.
Over the years, RFLD has moved from advocacy alone to funding the movement directly. Through our Africa Grant Portfolio, RFLD made 27 grants worth US$722,100 to 26 organisations between June and September 2026. Ten of those grants, worth US$400,000, went to organisations working with Vulnerable Groups in West Africa that prefer not to be named.
We publish what we give. Our 2026 data report draws on the RFLD grants register: of the 17 grants listed for June to September 2026, 13 support work in francophone West Africa, for a total of US$282,100, about 88% of the money in that register. The same register shows where we have not yet reached. None of those grants went to an organisation in Burkina Faso or Guinea, two countries where civic space is most restricted. We have said publicly that we will report on this gap.
Our delegation will bring this practice to the Assembly’s three days.
Adopt: homegrown giving and individual donors
The first day’s community dialogues cover grassroots and indigenous giving, individual giving across African civil society, liberatory fundraising, and youth voice in the African Continental Free Trade Area. RFLD’s own experience is relevant here. AWID found that 81% of feminist organisations rely on autonomous resourcing such as volunteering, mutual aid, community fundraising and membership fees. Our member organisations live this every day. RFLD is also opening new channels for individual donors in Africa and abroad, including our GivingTuesday 2026 campaign, which aims to raise US$1,000,000 to end violence against women in Africa.
Advance: radical resourcing and regranting
Day two closes with a plenary discussion on radical resourcing and what philanthropy can learn from feminist movements. This is where RFLD has the most to share. Our data report finds that the strongest evidence supports flexible, multi-year funding delivered through regional intermediaries that know the context. Our West African Feminist Fund (WAFF) is built on that model. Our report also sets out public commitments: we will publish our grants register every quarter, keep at least half of each regranting programme in francophone West Africa, and pair every grant with organisational strengthening through the RFLD Suite.
That last point matters to us. A grant alone does not keep an organisation standing. Through the RFLD Organizational Resilience Program, we give member organisations a free management suite and training to run their finances and reporting. Strong systems make it easier for small organisations to receive larger and more flexible funding.
Amplify: narrative power and open knowledge
On the third day, one of the community dialogues asks what African feminist movements teach about building collective narrative power. RFLD will contribute its work on open data and free learning. The Maputo Barometer tracks how African states turn the Maputo Protocol into national law and budgets. The Protocol has now been ratified by 46 of the 55 African Union member states, and the next edition of the Barometer will be published on 11 July 2027.
Our Académie francophone du RFLD offers free certifying courses on women’s rights and organisational management. These courses are now also open in English and in Portuguese, so that anglophone and lusophone learners can earn the same certificates. This is one practical answer to the language gap: knowledge that starts in French and travels to the rest of the continent.
What we will ask for
Our delegation will carry the recommendations of our 2026 data report to funders and peers in Accra. We will ask funders to commit to a share of gender funding for francophone West Africa and to publish it every year. We will ask for flexible grants of at least three years, with core funding that lets organisations build reserves. We will encourage funding through regional intermediaries and national women’s funds, with their operating costs covered.
Language comes up in every one of these conversations. We will ask funders to accept applications and reports in French and to pay for translation and interpretation. We will also ask for distinct approaches for the Sahel and for coastal states, including support for informal groups and organisations working from exile, and for reporting rules that do not expose activists to risk.
African philanthropy has a role of its own in this. African foundations, family funds and individual givers are growing. They can choose to work in French and Portuguese from the start. They can trust organisations close to communities with flexible money. RFLD wants to build these partnerships in Accra, and to follow them up after the Assembly.
Accra itself shows why this matters. Our Africa Office in Accra is where RFLD manages its grants to organisations across the continent. Bringing francophone organisations to this city, for three days of shared work, builds links between English-speaking and French-speaking movements that rarely meet in the same place. Those links outlast any single event.
After the Assembly
The sponsored francophone delegates will return home with new contacts and commitments they can use in their own work. RFLD will gather what the delegation learns and share it with our member organisations, in French and in English. We will publish a short account of the Assembly on this website and in the RFLD newsletter and feed the lessons into the next edition of our data report on funding feminist movements in francophone West Africa.
For RFLD, sponsoring French-speaking delegates is part of a longer commitment. The organisations we fund should also be present where decisions about funding are discussed. Each Assembly is a chance to bring more of them in, and to make sure that the future of African philanthropy is shaped by the people it is meant to serve.
Read our reports
- Funding Feminist Movements in Francophone West Africa: 2026 Data (PDF), with the article on its three findings
- RFLD 2025 Annual Journal
- RFLD grants register, June to September 2026
- Africa Grant Portfolio
- All RFLD resources and publications
Meet us in Accra
Funders and African foundations who would like to meet the RFLD delegation during the Assembly can write to gbenagnon.john@rflgd.org for partnerships, or to programs@rflgd.org for programme questions. Media enquiries go to communications.info@rflgd.org.
About RFLD. The Réseau des Femmes Leaders pour le Développement (RFLD) is a pan-African network of 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 African countries, led by African women. RFLD works on human rights, gender equality, health, development, and peace and security. It holds Observer Status with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (N°553). Learn more about RFLD.
