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Driving funding to grassroots African-led organizations, with an emphasis on collaboration and local solutions.
About Us:
Pamoja Africa Impact Fund supports African-led grassroots organizations to collaborate, co-innovate and expand their capacity. We provide unrestricted funding, peer-to-peer learning and networking opportunities to support these community-based-organizations to become self-sustaining and scale up impact in last mile villages of Africa.
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“Pamoja” is the Swahili word for “Together”. We named our fund after this word because we know we are stronger together.
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Our role is to act as facilitators and connectors to help local people design their own grassroots, sustainable solutions to a variety of development challenges and goals.
"There are a number of good grassroots organizations effectively solving Africa and/or country specific problems. It is very difficult for them to get the attention of grant funders who are based mostly outside Africa, even if these organizations have offices in Africa. These organizations are small, and fundraising takes a great deal of time"
- Ron Boehm - Boma Investments
The Challenge:
Locally-led, grassroots African organizations all too often work in isolation. This limits their advocacy power, creates duplication and restricts innovation. These siloed efforts create a scenario where you have wonderfully motivated people with big ideas and even bigger hearts who are unable to effectively implement their visions because they lack skills in essential tasks such as major gifts cultivation or grant-writing. The lack of necessary structures and systems limits the flow of resources. Most funders do not even know these organizations exist.
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According to 2016-2019 data published in The State of Global Giving by U.S. Foundations, only 5.2% of the $9 billion USD dollars in grants from US foundations directed to Sub-Saharan Africa went to local organizations; 94.8% went to Foreign- led organizations. That is why we created Pamoja Africa Impact fund: to foster collaboration among African-led organizations. “Pamoja” is a Swahili word meaning “together”. We know we are stronger together and we are here to unite grassroots organizations to create a new movement in strategic philanthropy, where the money flows directly to the people.
This is a fund for Africans, by Africans
Our Solution:
Pamoja Africa Impact Fund is on a mission to create lasting change in African last mile villages. We do this by fostering collaboration and co-innovation among African-led organizations to build their capacity, diversify their funding sources and drive more unrestricted funding to where it is needed most.
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Unrestricted Funding:
The Fund provides an avenue for donors and philanthropists to directly move aid quickly to African-led organisations -- enabling aid to reach the last mile person with ease.
Collaboration & Capacity Building
The Fund unites a peer-to-peer cohort of African-led organizations to support and grow from one another. We offer workshops, conferences and other learning opportunities and tools to support capacity building for locally-led organizations, informed by their needs to effectively maximize impact and scale.
Advocacy
The Fund amplifies the voices of locally-led organizations through impact documentation and networking-- increasing partners’ visibility by regional and international engagements, including an annual Pamoja Africa Fund Fellowship conference, featuring a multi-day series of hard and soft skills-building workshops and networking opportunities.