ACT Ubumbano convened the first of our in-country Learning Hubs in Malawi in July. Activists from organisations working on GBV, LGBTQ+, SRHR with a youth focus, climate change, and other issues spent time reflecting on how their work has shown effective solidarity with the communities they serve and live in.  Climate change continues to be the biggest challenge that plagues Malawi, with the current shortage of fuel and foreign currency contributing to making daily living that much more difficult.  Local activists Joy Munthali and Clement Makuwa facilitated the Hub.

Click on the links to view pictures and a poem on the event.

The “Karibu New Realities Grant” (KNRG)” – an African-led and co-designed grantmaking pilot project within the Karibu Foundation – is now accepting concept notes for ongoing or emerging initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa with start date of 1st January 2024.

The project’s “Core Group” (consisting of African activists and civil society members) is looking to support groups of change-agents in Sub-Saharan Africa who have bold, innovative, forward-thinking, and “constructive troublemaking” ideas that disrupt the status quo of injustices that the continent and our world are currently facing.

Application System Open: 20 June, 2023
Application Deadline: 16 August, 2023

Click here to read more.

Are you a content creator, wordsmith, performance artist, visual artist, or journalist whose work tells African stories beyond stereotypes of poverty, conflict, disease, poor leadership and corruption? Africa No Filter’s Kekere Storytellers Fund could support your next project.

The fund pays micro-grants to emerging storytellers who are already creating and publishing unique and compelling content that offers fresh and alternative perspectives of Africa, to show a continent that’s innovative, evolving, and creative. The Kekere Storytellers Fund is Africa No Filter’s way of ensuring that funding — which is limited and rarely accessed by up-and-coming storytellers — reaches artists, journalists, and content creators who share our passion for telling better stories about Africa and telling stories about Africa better.

Deadline: Applications are open until the end of the year, or until we’ve selected 20 storytellers for the fund.

Click here to read more.

Womandla Foundation is a Girls and Women led-serving nonprofit and apolitical organization in Zimbabwe that seeks to improve the economic well being and quality of life of adolescent girls and women through feminist oriented innovative approaches to promote and protect their rights. Womandla Foundation consists of a diverse team with representatives from Key populations and vulnerable communities. Their projects are led by the beneficiaries to ensure sustainability.

Click here to read more about Womandla Foundation.

Story telling is a powerful political tool that can improve activism strategies. Writing your own story is empowering and unleashes imagination about solutions to problems. Writing a story lends to the writer some distance and perspective, and to the reader it gives insight and understanding into a specific situation.

The Ubumbano Voice App is a free platform that encourages activists and community participants to write about their lived experiences – unedited and un-curated. It is a space for activists and community members to represent and interpret their own lived reality, to represent their truth.

This publication is a collation of those stories and will be distributed in hard copy. An online version is available here.

Freedoms South Africa, with support from ACT Ubumbano, launched South Africa’s first automated expungement guide to help people clear their criminal record. The ClearMe App aims to ensure that people who are eligible for expungement can clear their records and exercise their rights to equality, work and travel.

Click here to view a short video of the launch speech by Wayne Jean-Pierre, Director of Freedoms SA. Click here to view the gallery. You can access the app here.

Illicit financial flows refer to the movement of money across borders that is illegal in its source (e.g. corruption, smuggling), its transfer (e.g. tax evasion), or its use (e.g. terrorist financing). In a 2020 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), it was estimated that African countries lose $88.6 billion annually to these illicit financial activities. ACT Ubumbano was invited by the World Council of Churches to the relaunch in Africa of the ZacTax Campaign. ZacTax is modelled on the transformative story of Zacchaeus and advocates for, among other things, tax justice and addressing social and ecological debts, including reparations for colonialism and slavery. Access the Toolkit to help you get involved.

This year we have a reduced budget for the Solidarity Grants facility, so amounts allocated were in all instances less than what was requested. Furthermore, a number of applications were declined as they either didn’t fit the criteria or were incomplete.  Still, we managed to allocate funding to 45 organisations in 6 countries.  Thirteen of these actions are about amplifying community voice in advocacy, with nine focusing on activism on environmental justice. The rest focus on GBV, Human Rights, and Peacebuilding, among other issues.