African Visionary Fund – a pooled fund with support from partners such as the King Baudouin Foundation US, Segal Family Foundation, Skoll Foundation, and Tawingo Fund – have announced $1 million in general operating support grants to six organisations, all of which are African-led and work across a variety of key sectors such as education, health, human rights and livelihoods.

‘We are in an unprecedented moment of uprising globally, creating opportunities to take action on equity and shift resources to communities. The African Visionary Fund is committing $1 million in flexible funding directly to African-led organisations because proximity matters. This commitment is our first step to match the remarkable impact of African visionaries with the investment they deserve,’ said Katie Bunten-Wamaru, AVFund’s Co-CEO.

The six organisations joining the AVFund portfolio are Barefoot Law, Dandelion Africa, Rays of Hope, SaCoDé, Shule Direct and Wezesha Impact. In the selection process, AVFund was looking for organisations with shared values and that are taking an innovative approach in the execution of their mission and pioneering as they deliver deep, systemic, community-rooted change. The Fund was also looking for organisations that were African-led and Africa-based.

African-led organisations are chronically under-funded by global philanthropy due to overlapping barriers such as a lack of proximity to funder networks and well-documented implicit bias, said AVFund. Less than one per cent of international humanitarian funding goes directly to locally-led organisations, which limits the scope of their impact in the communities they serve.

Looking ahead, AVFund is working to raise $10 million by 2023 to support African visionaries to accelerate their impact. The Fund envisions a world where African visionaries have the resources they need to accelerate their impact and are recognised by funders as critical drivers of systems change.

‘While philanthropy often moves slowly, the African Visionary Fund hopes to be a bridge to get resources to African visionaries now and support the broader movement for community-led development,’ said AVFund in a statement.