Zimba Grants

Description

1) Objective

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) is a grant making foundation that supports local, national and regional women’s organisations working towards the empowerment of African women and the promotion and realisation of their rights. By specialising in grant-making and focused, tailored movement-building programmes, they work to strengthen and support the work of African women’s organisations.

Zimba is a Luganda word meaning ‘Build’. This will support capacity strengthening and movement building in French-speaking Africa only. The grants will support the following interventions:

• Feminist political consciousness-raising, feminist education, feminist campaigns and amplifying feminist voice
• Alliance building, networking and coalition organising around critical issues
• Institutional capacity strengthening, including but not limited to funding skills and knowledge exchange training, workshops and teach-ins for activists or organisational staff, developing and reviewing organisational policies and procedures, affording the costs of facilitators to deliver organisational capacity activities.

2) Eligibility

Eligible are girl-led movements, organisations and collectives led by African women and gender diverse persons organising in non-traditional ways (like creatives and artists among others) located in French-speaking African countries only.

3) Location

This grant is open to applicants from all french speaking countries in Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo, the Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, the Seychelles, and Togo.

4) Budget

Applicants can apply for between $5,000 and $20,000 to be implemented by December 2025. These are short term grants of not more than 6 months.

5) Application

Deadline for submitting your application is 11:59 GMT on 27th May 2025.