Women anchor Africa’s democracy movements and face its sharpest repression. We resource and protect them.
In market squares, courtrooms, and newsrooms across the region, women are the organisers, litigators, and truth-tellers holding democratic movements together. Their leadership is not a talking point. It is an operational fact of every successful civic movement on the continent.
It is also punished. Women human rights defenders face gendered attacks that male counterparts rarely experience: sexualised smear campaigns, threats against children, and targeted online violence designed to drive them out of public life. Protecting and resourcing women's leadership is both a matter of justice and a strategic necessity for the movement as a whole.
Direct resourcing and strategic accompaniment for women-led and feminist organisations and movements at the centre of democratic struggles, with funding structured around their priorities rather than donor templates.
Dedicated security support built for gendered threats: digital protection against online violence, legal response to smear campaigns, safe accommodation when needed, and wellbeing support that treats burnout and trauma as the security issues they are.
Pushing for women's meaningful participation in the processes that decide the future: electoral contests, negotiations, and transitions, so the people who hold the line also hold power.
Women-led and feminist organisations, women human rights defenders, and movements committed to women's full participation in democratic life across the region.
Core funding, protection services designed around gendered threat models, and advocacy delivered with partner organisations that women activists already trust.
Women-led organisations funded to lead. Defenders protected from gendered attacks. Democratic processes in which women's participation is guaranteed, not negotiated.
Fund this program directly, or talk to our founders about how it fits into the wider architecture. We report on every contribution with full transparency.
