The organisations doing the most important gender justice work in Africa are rarely the ones with the most resources or the most visibility. AFWAG exists to change both.
We are the connective tissue of Africa’s gender equity ecosystem, working alongside nearly 300 grassroots organisations across 23 countries. Partnership with AFWAG is not only financial. It is a commitment to the ecosystem: to the leaders building it, the stories that need telling, and the systems that need to change for this work to last.
There are two ways to partner with us.
Investment partnerships
For foundations, corporates, and allied funders who want to invest in the organisational foundations, leadership, and network connectivity that make gender justice work durable.
Skip to: Foundations, Corporate partners, Allied funders
Narrative and platform partnerships
For media organisations, journalists, researchers, academics, and advocates who want to shift how African women's leadership is covered, studied, and amplified.
Skip to: Media Allies, Academic and research partners, Advocacy allies
Investment thesis
What investment partners are investing in.
Most gender equity funding flows to programmes. Programmes end. The organisations running them often end with them, regardless of what they proved or who they reached.
AFWAG invests in the foundations that make organisations durable: the governance structures, financial systems, peer networks, and leadership development that allow a grassroots organisation to survive a funder’s exit, adapt to changing context, and keep doing work that its community depends on.
The nearly 300 organisations in the AFWAG network are already doing the work. What they often lack is the organisational depth to sustain it. That is the gap your investment fills.
The network at scale
Beyond connectivity: when the network delivers together.
AFWAG’s core work is building the connective tissue that makes nearly 300 organisations more resilient, more visible, and better resourced. But the depth of that network creates something beyond individual organisational strengthening: the ability to coordinate member organisations to deliver at scale.
When a shared challenge or opportunity emerges across the network, AFWAG can bring members with the relevant expertise together to design and deliver a response jointly. Co-designed with practitioner knowledge, led by the people closest to the work, and rooted in the communities they serve.
For investment partners, this means that funding AFWAG is not only funding the foundations of nearly 300 individual organisations. It is funding a network that can mobilise, coordinate, and deliver collectively when the moment calls for it.
By the numbers
The network, in numbers.
Grassroots organisations in the network
African countries represented
Resources in the AFWAG learning portal, built by and for practitioners
The 10,000+ hours figure reflects the accumulated time network members have spent in structured peer exchange, communities of practice, facilitated learning sessions, and cross-border problem-solving over the past three years. It is a conservative estimate of what happens when nearly 300 organisations stop working in isolation.
Why AFWAG?
What AFWAG offers that you cannot get through direct funding alone.
A verified entry point into 23 countries.
Rather than navigating hundreds of organisations independently, AFWAG gives you access to a vetted, active network of nearly 300 organisations with documented track records. We have done the due diligence.
Aggregated intelligence from the ground.
What nearly 300 organisations are seeing, struggling with, and solving for in real time. AFWAG synthesises this into intelligence that informs where investment is most needed and most likely to hold.
Risk mitigation for your existing portfolio.
If you are funding gender justice organisations in Africa, several are likely in the AFWAG network. Investing in AFWAG strengthens the infrastructure those organisations rely on to survive, making your direct investments more likely to last.
A network that can deliver, not just connect.
When shared priorities demand it, the AFWAG network can be coordinated to design and deliver together: co-led by practitioners, grounded in the communities they serve, and accountable to the ecosystem, not to a single funder's requirements
Investment partnerships
Foundations and institutional funders
AFWAG is built for the kind of investment that foundations are increasingly being called to make: locally led, systems-focused, and long-term. We offer a tested model, a verified network of nearly 300 organisations, and the reporting infrastructure to demonstrate impact at scale.
What AFWAG offers: unrestricted or programme-linked multi-year funding vehicles, co-design of learning and evaluation frameworks, access to real-time network intelligence, and quarterly impact reporting.
What we ask: a willingness to fund the system, not just the project, and a multi-year commitment where possible.
Corporate partners
For corporates looking to meet ESG commitments through genuinely locally led investment, AFWAG offers a single partnership that reaches 23 countries without the operational complexity of managing multiple relationships. We provide the accountability infrastructure, the impact reporting, and the direct connection to communities.
What AFWAG offers: multi-year programme funding vehicles, employee engagement with network leaders, joint impact reporting, and ESG-aligned communications support.
What we ask: investment in systems over optics, and openness to reporting frameworks that reflect what change at this level actually looks like.
Allied organisations and peer funders
If you fund gender justice organisations in Africa, AFWAG can extend the reach and durability of that investment. We work alongside peer funders, re-granters, and allied organisations to build shared infrastructure and reduce duplication across the ecosystem.
What AFWAG offers: co-investment in shared network infrastructure, warm referrals into and from the AFWAG network, and joint convenings and learning exchanges.
What we ask: a commitment to collaboration over competition, and a genuine interest in what the ecosystem needs.
Narrative and platform partnerships.
Not every partnership involves funding. Some of the most consequential relationships AFWAG has are with journalists who cover the continent’s gender justice story with rigour, researchers who take grassroots evidence seriously, and advocates who understand that narrative is infrastructure too.
Media Allies
Every time African gender justice is covered in international media, the question of who gets quoted matters. AFWAG’s network includes nearly 300 leaders doing transformative work across 23 countries. They are the people who should be in those stories, on those panels, and in those bylines.
AFWAG’s Media Allies programme connects journalists and editors committed to centering African women’s leadership with the practitioners, data, and stories that make that possible. This is not a press list. It is a working relationship.
What AFWAG offers: direct access to nearly 300 leaders across 23 countries and multiple issue areas, documented impact stories with verifiable outcomes, continental intelligence on gender justice trends, and editorial support for journalists covering the space.
What we ask: a commitment to covering African women’s leadership as expertise, not as subject matter, and a willingness to engage with the complexity of this work rather than reach for the simplest narrative.
Contact: publicaffairs@afwag.org with ‘Media Allies’ in the subject line.
Academic and research partners
The evidence gap in gender justice is not a knowledge problem. It is a legitimacy problem: grassroots organisations generate rich, contextual intelligence about what works, but that intelligence rarely enters formal research channels or policy debates in the form it deserves.
AFWAG is a living repository of that intelligence. Nearly 300 organisations, across 23 countries, generating knowledge in real time. We are building the infrastructure to make that intelligence legible, sharable, and consequential.
We work with academic partners who want to engage seriously with practitioner-generated evidence: co-designing research questions with the network, commissioning studies that treat grassroots organisations as knowledge producers, and building the academic infrastructure that makes this evidence count.
What AFWAG offers: access to the network for ethical, practitioner-centred research, co-design of research frameworks grounded in the realities of the field, and a platform for findings to reach the practitioners who generated them.
What we ask: genuine co-design, not extraction. Researchers who treat network members as co-investigators, not data sources.
Contact: publicaffairs@afwag.org with ‘Research Partnership’ in the subject line.
Academic and research partners
The evidence gap in gender justice is not a knowledge problem. It is a legitimacy problem: grassroots organisations generate rich, contextual intelligence about what works, but that intelligence rarely enters formal research channels or policy debates in the form it deserves.
AFWAG is a living repository of that intelligence. Nearly 300 organisations, across 23 countries, generating knowledge in real time. We are building the infrastructure to make that intelligence legible, sharable, and consequential.
We work with academic partners who want to engage seriously with practitioner-generated evidence: co-designing research questions with the network, commissioning studies that treat grassroots organisations as knowledge producers, and building the academic infrastructure that makes this evidence count.
What AFWAG offers: access to the network for ethical, practitioner-centred research, co-design of research frameworks grounded in the realities of the field, and a platform for findings to reach the practitioners who generated them.
What we ask: genuine co-design, not extraction. Researchers who treat network members as co-investigators, not data sources.
Contact: publicaffairs@afwag.org with ‘Research Partnership’ in the subject line.
Our current partners and funders.
AFWAG is grateful to the partners and funders whose investment has made this work possible.
A note on how we work.
AFWAG does not position itself above the ecosystem it is part of. We are embedded in the same constraints, the same funding landscape, and the same structural challenges that our network members face. We do not take credit for the policy wins or programme successes of our members. What we do is create the conditions that make those wins more likely and more durable.
This applies to every kind of partnership. Whether you are a funder, a journalist, or a researcher, what we are building together is not a relationship between AFWAG and an external supporter. It is a relationship with the nearly 300 organisations whose work this exists to strengthen.
Start a conversation.
Whether your interest is financial investment, media collaboration, research, or advocacy, fill in the form below and tell us what you are bringing and what you are hoping to find. Our team will be in touch within five working days.
