Action for African Progress is a Faith Based Non-Profit Organization that contributes to the promotion of economic, social and environmental progress in least developed African countries by providing concessional funding to charity organizations, churches and companies as well as technical assistance for capacity building. We focus on food security, emergency response to disaster, climate change, promoting health and education, provision of humanitarian assistance, supporting global peace and stability, supporting orphans and vulnerable children, empowering youths and women, fostering democracy and the rule of law and catalyzing innovation and partnership.
We believe strong local organizations are essential in ensuring that improvements in the lives of people they support is relevant, cost-effective and sustainable. Therefore, we prioritize our investments in African Community Based Organizations, Companies, NGOs, Churches and Civil Society Organizations that are aligned with local stakeholder priorities.
Effective philanthropy requires deep engagement with the people, organizations and contexts in which we invest. Therefore, we seek to understand the priorities and challenges of the organizations we support and evolving contexts in which they operate. Furthermore, based on our rigorous due diligence and ongoing investment management, we have a deep understanding of the strengths and challenges of the organizations in which we fund. We leverage this engagement to inform our investment, provide financial & non-financial support to organizations and connect funders, implementers and other stakeholders with one another to build collective effort towards change.
We partner with credible organizations in Africa to establish the legitimacy of potential clients before we fund them. We believe evidence that is developed and shared in an actionable way can improve our funding policies and practice.
Improvement in the lives of community members is driven by Governments, businesses, charity organizations, religious organizations and social movements. Therefore, we invest in multiple types of entities and structure our investments according to the type of organization in which we are investing and what we aim to achieve.
We direct grant holders to maintain a clear accountability framework both to the funds we give them and those sourced elsewhere. We also aim to promote greater accountability by strengthening the ability of Civil Society Organizations to hold policy makers and duty bearers to account and defend fundamental human rights.
We believe there are no silver bullets to complex community problems and no single investment or organization will enable scalable, suitable solutions to the challenges we tackle. Therefore, we invest in complementary organizations and programs that address multiple aspects of a problem. We draw on our deep engagement to convene and connect these organizations and encourage mutual learning and coordinate action where appropriate.
Girls and women across the world are held back by systemic and entrenched inequality and discrimination. We fund organizations working to achieve social and economic equality with a focus on prioritizing the rights of women and girls. Examples include raising awareness on sexual and reproductive health, fighting violence against women, women economic empowerment among others.
The global goals have set out the urgency to improve basic services like education, sanitation and affordable energy. We work to improve the supply of services and build systems around basic services to improve quality and provision. For example, by funding companies and charity organizations dealing with health and education, provision of cheap clean energy, youth and women empowerment, clean water for domestic and commercial use, supporting OVCs and protecting the environment.
By co-investing with other funders, we share both the risks and successes and ultimately maximize impact beyond what we could have achieved on our own. Furthermore, co-investing mitigates the risk of a grantee over-relying on our funding.
We seek to promote peaceful and resilient societies with grant holders operating in some of the most fragile countries. We fund organizations that support peace in the regions where they operate in order to resolve local tensions and help the communities to become more stable and resilient to shocks creating improved conditions. We also fund organizations that provide emergency support and empowerment programs to conflict affected communities.
As a private philanthropy, we are uniquely positioned to make long term commitments to the complex problems we are trying to solve. We strive to find organizations with clear sustainability framework to be able to thrive after our exit.
We also implement multi-year portfolio strategies and make investment in programs and organizations that have the potential to drive lasting change.
While our strategies and investments often have a long term view, they also have an exit strategy in mind, ideally one that involves ongoing sustainability and often scale up of what we fund beyond our investment.
We believe we must balance strategy with opportunity so that we can deeply engage with specific focus areas while ensuring we are responsive to evolving priorities of our key partners and beneficiaries.
Economic growth should benefit all, creating decent jobs without modern slavery or child labor. We fund organizations looking to increase and diversify income for poor communities in developing countries as well as advocating for free and fair work conditions.
Many of our beneficiaries focus on improving economic prospects for specific disadvantaged groups like disabled persons, youths and women, pastoral communities, subsistence farmers, sex workers among others.
