WHAT WE DO
As the first rapid response Fund on the continent, UAF-Africa adds value to the work of women’s rights activists and organisations through provision of critical financial and technical resources. At UAF-Africa money is recognised as a fundamental tool in protecting and advancing women’s rights and enabling their participation in crucial processes that contribute to shifting of power relations.
UAF-Africa is the only Fund on the continent that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year! Our high tech funding mechanisms ensure that we respond to most requests within 48 hours. We disburse funds to successful applicants within 1-5 days. UAF-Africa receives and processes requests in the 5 official African Union languages i.e English, French, Kiswahili, Portuguese and Arabic. Our office boasts of wide in house linguistic capacity allowing for greater efficiency and higher turnover of proposals.
The Fund provides financial support for strategic interventions to advance women’s human rights in situations of conflict; precedent-setting legal or legislative interventions and protection of women’s human rights defenders who are persecuted because of their work. Grant proposals must be strategic, unanticipated and time urgent, sustainable and supported by known groups.
UAF–Africa ardently believes in the power of women to activate social change. We recognise the importance of arming women with facts and figures to enable them challenge issues from an informed perspective. The Fund has positioned herself strategically to bolster women’s efforts, support them as agents of change and work with them to ensure deep and lasting transformation to an equal world for all.
1. Defending the defenders:
UAF-Africa provides urgent financial and technical support for the protection of women’s rights activists who are persecuted as a direct result of their activism. We recognise and support women’s rights activists and organisations whose lives are at risk because of their work in challenging patriarchy, fundamentalisms, harmful traditional norms and values or any other contextual factors that impact negatively on women’s rights or seek to subjugate women. Realising that many women’s rights activists defend women’s rights in their individual capacities; to defend their own rights or the rights of other women, without necessarily being members of women’s rights groups or organisations, UAF-Africa supports women’s rights activists who, through their individual actions, can have an impact on the collective advancement and protection of women’s human rights.
2. Protecting women’s individual dignity, safety and autonomy:
UAF-Africa provides urgent financial and technical support for the protection of women’s rights activists who are persecuted as a direct result of their activism. We recognise and support women’s rights activists and organisations whose lives are at risk because of their work in challenging patriarchy, fundamentalisms, harmful traditional norms and values or any other contextual factors that impact negatively on women’s rights or seek to subjugate women. Realising that many women’s rights activists defend women’s rights in their individual capacities; to defend their own rights or the rights of other women, without necessarily being members of women’s rights groups or organisations, UAF-Africa supports women’s rights activists who, through their individual actions, can have an impact on the collective advancement and protection of women’s human rights.
2. Protecting women’s individual dignity, safety and autonomy:
Women have the right to dignified and secure existence in a world free from physical, sexual, psychological and economic harm where they can determine how to conduct and exercise their bodily, sexual and reproductive rights in private or public spaces, during peace time and in situations of armed conflicts or political volatile situations.
UAF-Africa supports women’s rights organisations and women’s human rights defenders (this includes female identifying transgender persons, lesbians, bisexual and intersex persons) to advocate for and safeguard their rights to bodily integrity, autonomy, safety and dignity.
3. Justice and the rule of law:
UAF-Africa recognises that legal frameworks and the rule of law are important tools for advancing and promoting women’s rights. Access to justice and the practice and implementation of the rule of law have contributed to women’s marginalisation and secondary position in society owing to corruption, patriarchy, poor legal and social structures for justice including relaxed enforcement mechanisms. UAF-Africa supports women’s human rights defenders and organisations to engage in, challenge and influence processes that lead to the enforcement of justice and rule of law. This includes precedent setting legal and legislative interventions, review, enactment and implementation of progressive laws, challenging retrogressive laws, interpretation and introduction of progressive legal clauses which all ultimately strengthen the women’s voice and visibility while creating long-lasting and systemic change.
4. Economic Justice:
The reality of today’s world is that the imbalances of power in the economic realm ultimately transpose to imbalanced systems and structures in other spheres. Women’s socio-political, environmental and legal welfare are hinged on access to economic resources. The right to acquire and utilize resources including land, minerals, water and energy for economic gains has been indiscriminately applied to women in Africa. This has contributed to their disempowerment in various realms. Access to employment and increased and equal opportunities within the labor market are key drivers of gender equality. This is particularly relevant as the economic importance of the natural resource sector and within the extractive industry is growing in many African countries. However, the impacts of extractive operations are not gender neutral with women being the first to bear the negative impact of irresponsible extraction practices. The exploitative and ecologically destructive nature of the extractive industry leaves women in particularly vulnerable in many socio-economic and security fronts at the disregard of the multinational companies and state actors involved in the industry.
UAF-Africa supports women’s human rights organisations and activists who seek to address and overcome the defining factors that contribute to women’s economic stagnation and advocate for an enabling environment with just and equitable frameworks that promote women’s economic self-reliance.
5. Natural resource governance & climate change:
Natural resource governance, climate change and social justice interact in a circular fashion and at the heart of this are women’s rights. Women are critical to the management of and control of natural resources. Women are equally pivotal in climate change adaptation and mitigation processes because of their overwhelmingly close relationship with natural resources but also because of the knowledge, skills with regard to adaptation and environmentally friendly production of natural resource outputs.
UAF-Africa supports women’s rights organisations and women’s rights activists to advocate for their active participation and decision making in the governance of natural resources and the orientation and implementation of climate change policies and practices.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Rapid Response Grantmaking? Rapid response grantmaking is the provision of immediate small grants within a short period of time to support interventions that are strategic and urgent which may not be part of planned program activities and are not covered by long term funding.
How does one apply for a rapid response grant? You can download our grant application forms through our website (uaf-africa.org) or request for an application form from our grantmaking team. All queries and applications are made to proposals@www.uaf-africa.org.
When can we submit an application for funding? We provide grants throughout the year and have no funding cycle. You can submit your application as soon as an urgent situation requires it.
What are the criteria for funding? We are only able to support interventions that are (a) Time Urgent b) Unanticipated c) Sustainable d) Strategic and e) Supported.
What do the criteria mean? Strategic – the action is related to a pre-determined plan to create structural change that will advance women’s human rights and address some the fundamental or root challenges that pre-empted the situation.
Unanticipated- the situation or opportunity could not have been foreseen and therefore could not have been planned for.Time Urgent- the initiative must take place quickly (during a period of less than three months) for it to be effective or the opportunity will be lost.
Sustainable — the group is able to carry out the proposed action effectively and can secure funding for its future sustainability.
Supported –the group has the support of others involved in women’s human rights or related fields, locally or globally who must also be familiar with the situation.
How are applications reviewed? The grantmaking team goes through each individual request and carries out due diligence including consulting our advisors and the endorsers you provide. We look at each application on a case by case basis. It is possible that despite meeting all the criteria, you may be asked further clarifying questions on your intervention and budget.
Why was our application unsuccessful? A number of factors can lead to your application being unsuccessful, one of them could be that the application did not meet the criteria. Other factors may include but are not limited to; discrepancies and misrepresentation in the application and if your intervention was on activities that we do not support or activities that could be planned or programmed for within an organisation’s normal work.
What does UAF-Africa not fund?
Humanitarian interventions (e.g. food, clothing, medical supplies, shelter)
Individual participation at conferences
Travel grants
Education scholarships, trainings and capacity building workshops
Income generating activities
Capital expenditures (vehicles, computers, office furniture) or for ongoing office running costs i.e. overheads, salaries, rent, telephone bills
Initiatives that are not women led or women centric
Partisan initiatives or political campaigns
Furthering of religious agenda
Provision of social or health care services such as medical care.
Program activities or activities that can be programmed for.
Furthering of a religious or political agenda
How much can we apply for? Our funding limits are as follows;Rapid Response Grants- 12,000USD
Defending the Defenders Grants- 5,000USD
Advocacy and Alliance Building Grants- 20,000USD
We applied and did not get the full amount we requested for, why is this? We review the budget and do our own due diligence concerning the amounts indicated. We are only able to support budgetary items that fall within our mandate. Please refer above for expenses that we are not able to support.
Can I apply as an individual? We are only able to provide grants through organizations. If applying on behalf of an individual, one would still need to apply through an organisation who would act as fiscal sponsor. We do not transfer funds to individual bank accounts.
Can collectives apply for funding? Yes, we do support organizations to come together to apply for funding as this leverages on collective capacities and resources. We will require a Memorandum of Understanding to indicate which roles each of the collective members will play.
Do we need to be a legally registered organisation or collective in order to apply? No, you do not need to be a legally registered organisation or collective in order to apply. We accept and encourage applications from non-registered collectives or groups. We fund both informal and formal organisations. For non-registered groups, it is important to have a registered group that can be a fiscal sponsor (taking care of your finances and reporting obligations).
Our collective/organisation has members who are men – can we still apply for a grant? You are only eligible to apply if a majority of the members of your group (at least 70%) identify as women and the organisation/collective must be women-led with women holding decision making positions.
What are your focus countries? We fund women’s right organisations across the African continent.
In what language can we submit our application? We review applications in the 5 African Union Official Languages; English, Swahili, French, Portuguese and Arabic.
Our organisation is NOT based in Africa but implements projects in an African country, can we apply for funding? No, part of UAF-Africa’s commitment is to encourage locally-led initiatives.
We sent our application to one of the other Urgent Action Fund Sisters, can they still support? There are four Urgent Action Fund sisters who operate autonomously covering the entire globe. Urgent Action Fund- Africa covers the African continent. If yours is an African based organisation seeking to intervene within an African country, then you should submit to Urgent Action Fund-Africa.
How fast will our application be reviewed? All applications are acknowledged within 24 hours and the review process conducted within 72 hours. How fast we review your application ultimately depends on the information you provide us and how fast we can verify this. We usually request that you prompt your endorsers so that they too can provide us with information as soon as possible.
We have applied to UAF-Africa before, can we apply for another grant? Yes, you can apply for another grant if the circumstances require urgent intervention and you have met all your reporting obligations. However, there are limitations that would affect your ability to receive funding more than once within the year such as if the request relates to an existing situation for which you have already received funding for.
Can an organisation submit two or more applications at a time? No, we do not review two or more applications from one organisation at the same time.
