The Karibu Foundation has launched a 2.5-year pilot project in participatory grantmaking in Sub-Saharan Africa, where African activists and civil society members are currently designing and making decisions on the grantmaking process. The project, known as the “Karibu New Realities Grant,” (KNRG) aims to practically put into effect the ethos of ‘nothing about us without us’ and to continue to shift power also in Karibu’s grantmaking.

In their newsletter “Voices from the South”, there is an update on the process of building this pilot project from the African “Core Group” of the KNRG themselves. The Core Group frames the update through the experience of “Bongi ” – a fictional (but representative) civil society leader living in Southern Africa whose network is seeking funds for systemic change work.  Here they discuss the need to move decision-making power closer to the “Bongis” in Africa, but also the need to ease application processes for movements on the ground.

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