Why We Do This
Note: This post was published before our 2025 rebrand. We are now called African Collaborative.
All of the African Visionary Fund’s team members agree that the best part of our work is talking to our partners. Getting updates on the incredible impact of their innovative development models, learning about the current trends in the field, and hearing about the challenges of being African founders and leaders. Those conversations, both energizing and disheartening, are the driving force behind our advocacy work.
Beyond driving unrestricted resources to proximate African-led organizations, our secondary mission is to catalyze systemic change in the global development and philanthropy field. We are committed to advocating for resourcing locally-rooted organizations in a way that centers their mission and vision over funders’ sectoral agendas, projects, and burdensome bureaucratic practices. In 2023, we made strides that we hope will serve as catalytic moments within and beyond our networks.
Pictured: Msichana Initiative, Tanzania
Sharing New Ideas with IDIA
When we were invited by the International Development Innovation Alliance to serve as the Lead Learning Partner for their Equity and Innovation initiative, we leapt at the opportunity to share equitable approaches to funding on a platform of 14 of the world’s largest development innovation funders. In a sector that has historically been slow to change, our goal was to advocate for a transition to fair funding mechanisms that hold donors accountable to both commitment and action.
We spent the bulk of 2023 engaged in closed sessions, feedback workshops and panel events at the invitation of IDIA, which all culminated in co-developing the Equity Principles and Metrics Framework for Meaningful Localization.
Tested with nearly 200 country-based innovators and changemakers from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the framework is designed to challenge all funders to refine their internal processes based on new ideas about equity, power shifting, and localization. It aims to prove that progress towards systems change is achievable—even within the current inequitable system, and even as we collectively work to dismantle it for a better one. While it is still premature to measure the impact of this engagement, the commitments from multiple member organizations to integrate some or all of these principles into their strategic plans and operations suggest that our efforts will have far-reaching implications on the field in the years ahead. This is why we do this.
Telling Our Short Story
Another year-long advocacy project was the development, filming and publishing of our first-ever documentary short as part of The Video Consortium and Skoll
Foundation's Storytelling Solutions Project. We worked with Kenyan filmmaker E.M. Mwangi to create "FUNDING AFRICA" featuring Teresa Njoroge, founder and CEO of Clean Start Africa, and our co-CEO Atti Worku. Our goal for this film was to illustrate the detrimental impact of philanthropy’s systemic inequities at a personal, human level. We wanted to offer our manifesto of how much progress can be achieved when local leaders are freed from the burden of an unjust system and truly empowered to do what they do best.
We are incredibly grateful for Teresa’s vulnerability and candor. Her story resonated deeply with many of her peers in our portfolio and made them feel represented, seen and heard. We’re thankful to Skoll and the Video Consortium for this incredible opportunity, and to our filmmaker Eric for his vision to bring the authenticity of our work to life in a compelling way. We hope everyone who watches this film views it as an invitation to engage more with us, share knowledge and tools with us, and learn with us as we continue our own learning journey.
Spreading the Message
2023 offered many more opportunities for us to advance our advocacy agenda and connect with our peers across the philanthropy and development ecosystem. In May, Atti and Rebeca Gyumi, founder of Msichana Initiative, attended the 2023 International Education Funders Group Conference in Edinburgh. Rebeca kicked off the conference during the opening plenary, and Atti joined a panel for a discussion about philanthropy’s place in systems change.
In September, our Strategic Partnerships Manager, Shamira Lukomwa, joined a panel discussion at NEID Global’s Innovations in International Philanthropy Symposium about using funds to achieve localization in philanthropy. We also co-hosted an event with Rippleworks during the United Nations General Assembly week in New York City, where Atti, Dixon Chibanda of Friendship Bench, and Doug Galen of Rippleworks spoke about the impact of operational changes that funders can make to increase investments in local organizations. In October, Atti participated in a State of the State opening plenary at Philanthropy Together and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Summit of Collaborative Funds in San Francisco, where she reflected on trends emerging in Africa’s collaborative fund landscape.
As with all parts of our work, our advocacy efforts center our portfolio partners’ experiences, challenges, and successes to unearth key insights on how to make funding partnerships more equitable, efficient, and impactful. In 2023, we were honored to work alongside leaders of organizations in our portfolio, Rebeca, Teresa and Dixon. In 2024 and beyond, we aim to further center and amplify our partners' voices in advocacy, empowering them to be the drivers of systemic shifts that recognize African leaders as innovative, capable, and essential in social impact and development.