TrustAfrica is a partner to the continent's change agents, diverse civil society organizations, top-ranked think tanks, and vibrant social movements. It aims to support civic engagement that achieves justice, accountability, and equitable development in Africa. In its 14-year history, TrustAfrica has stewarded over US$80 million in support of African civil society organizations and has worked at the local community level on advocacy campaigns to bring the voices of the most vulnerable and marginalized citizens to the continent's top policy arenas. Its theory of change is that societies become more stable, prosperous, equitable, and just with responsible citizenship and accountable leadership. It leverages philanthropy that connects resources to priority development needs and catalyzes action for Africa's transformation.

We now live in a world where Covid-19 is evenly distributed, but the equal opportunity to fight it is not. Four hundred twenty-two million people living in poverty on the African continent face the greatest risk of their lives. While the health and economic effects of Covid-19 ripple throughout the world, Covid-19 threatens to plunge one in three Africans into the deep end of poverty. We know the safety of those in our most marginalized communities is our collective immunity, yet awareness of our connection with our vulnerable sisters and brothers is almost non-existent.

To respond to this, the Community Immunity Initiative is a coordinated campaign to raise awareness and funding to support those living at the margins of society. Through this initiative, a collaboration between the Africa Philanthropy Network, TrustAfrica, and Southern Africa Trust, we hope to provide quick impact support to bring immediate relief to people living at the margins of society. While supporting policy initiatives, research, and advocacy efforts to provide long-term solutions to combat poverty and marginalization at the systemic level. Also, to ensure culturally contextualized and long-lasting solutions on the African continent are implemented. The initiative is also engaging activists, artists, athletes, medical professionals, musicians, and other respected voices from our global community to raise greater awareness of the impact of poverty and marginalization in Africa so together we can escalate the appropriate response.

The Pan Africa Conference on Illicit Financial flows and Taxation is an annual convening that brings together key stakeholders involved in efforts to curb IFF and enhance domestic resource mobilisation in Africa. The platform draws together actors from governments, civil society, International organisations, legislators, media, academia and national campaigners to take stock of the current state of play on the IFF agenda in Africa as well as progress made through global, regional and country level initiatives. The conference seeks to also act as a platform to articulate problems, propose solutions and explore opportunities for collaboration and common action.

Michar Kumalo is the Program Associate for Gateway Zimbabwe which is one of the initiatives under Zim Alliance.  She is also in the first Gateway Zimbabwe Fellowship cohort which is a leadership training to build and sustain healthy communities and reweave the social fabric of Zimbabwe using processes that foster healing, give primacy to local knowledge, awaken personal and collective agency and create new connections. She studied Honours in Sociology at the University of Zimbabwe and was a part of The UbuntuLab Cohort 3. Her passion is facilitating generative conversations that bring unlikely collaborators together using principles of deep democracy and appreciative inquiry to guide co-creative, healthy and sustainable pathways into a better future for all.

Word Cloud from TrustAfrica Programs Meeting in September: What is Your 1 Word Prayer for TrustAfrica?

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We’re excited to share this latest edition of our newsletter with you, particularly because we’ve been privileged to be part of so many important conversations about Africa’s development and the possibilities for transformative participation available to citizens, public and private leaders and academics. Read more to find out what interesting conversations we’ve been a part of around Democracy and Governance, Equitable Development and African Philanthropy. To start you off we have as our center piece in this edition remarks delivered by our Learning Manager, Ms. Tendisai Chigwedere during the 2nd African Philanthropy Conference from 3-5 August 2021.

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We welcome the upcoming legislative proposal by the European Commission for a Sustainable Corporate Governance directive, including mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD).  

To effectively stop human rights violations and negative environmental impacts in global supply chains, EU policymakers should ensure the upcoming legislation leads to positive impacts for rightsholders and improves the situation and the livelihoods of smallholders. It is key that the HREDD directive addresses the root causes of adverse impacts on human rights and the environment such as persistent poverty among smallholders.

Ogo Chukwudi is receiving the award from the Chairman Board of Directors Paradigm Leadership Support Initiative, Arc. (Rev) Polycarp Gbaja on behalf of TrustAfrica.

On the 1st of October 2021, TrustAfrica received an award in recognition of their effort to support the efficacy of public audit in Nigeria from a grantee partner - Paradigm Leadership Support Initiative (PLSI) during the organization's 5th anniversary and the launch of "Achieving Accountability and Development in Nigeria" report. TrustAfrica was one of the first organizations to support the vision of PLSI at the early stage by providing a grant to the organization. Congratulations to PLSI for five years of impact in the financial transparency space in Nigeria, and TrustAfrica is happy to have played a role in the five-year journey of PLSI.

Our African philanthropy program seeks to strengthen the recognition, practice and strategic impact of giving in Africa.  We recognize that solidarity and the culture of giving to help others is embedded in many African cultures and traditions as reflected in notions such as Ubuntu (I am because you are). We believe in philanthropy that “shifts the power”, endowing communities with voice and agency. Through our African philanthropy program, we work to build knowledge on African giving and contribute towards building a movement to nurture African giving and African resources towards addressing strategic challenges confronting the continent.  

TrustAfrica works to advance equitable economic development in Africa. Our work seeks to address economic injustices at national and global levels. To this end, we advocate for the reform of national, regional, and global economic institutions, rules, policies, and practices to ensure that the continent’s wealth benefits African citizens equitably and Africa’s resources are managed in a sustainable manner. Numerous injustices characterise the current global economic architecture including trade relations that disadvantage African countries; restricted space for African countries to independently set their own development priorities and make choices on economic policies; imposition of development models that continue to undermine industrialization and structural economic transformation; contracts and licensing regimes, especially in the natural resources sector that tend to benefit foreign multi-national corporations at the expense of African countries; and a global financial governance architecture that promotes net outflow of capital (both illicit and licit) from Africa to the developed world. As part of the post Covid-19 transition, our work advocates for building forward better – focusing on the equitable and sustainable utilization of the continent’s natural resources and biodiversity, including land and water for the continent’s economic and social transformation.