African Social Movements Funders Meeting, Dakar, Senegal

A team of two from CivSource Africa was honoured to travel to Dakar, Senegal to attend an African Social Movements Funders’ meeting between the 28th and 29th of March 2023. The meeting, organized by TrustAfrica and the Wallace Global Fund was a build-up on the African Social Movements Baraza held in October 2022. The meeting brought together funders and social movement leaders from across the continent and beyond. The two-day meeting was geared around moving forward the five areas of interest from the preceding meeting. The five key discussion points were:

1. The need to significantly scale up funding available to African Social Movements.

2. Establishing a substantive collaborative African Social Movements Fund.

3. The need for ‘fit for purpose’ transformed models of trust-based funding for movements.

4. The need to go beyond just funding support.

5. The need for guiding principles for donors to follow in working with African social movements.

Day 1 of the meeting focused on the values and the campaign points that are not related to resourcing and the Fund. On the first day, the participants were grounded in aligning values before making substantial contributions to the key discussion areas. Day 2 focused on resourcing and the proposed Fund, work around the campaign for funding models for African social movements, and the discussion of the Draft Manifesto.