Introduction

The Special Initiative for Africa was launched in November 2001 with the goal of combining convenings, grantmaking and partnership building to strengthen African solutions to some of the most intractable challenges facing Africa, namely peace and security, identity and citizenship, and regional integration. Ultimately, the initiative will develop into a self-sustaining African foundation that models institutional accountability and promotes Africa-wide partnerships in pursuing African solutions to major challenges. Currently located at the Ford Foundation head office in New York, the initiative will move to Africa at the end of 2004, when the transition to a foundation will begin.

Rationale of the Initiative

The initiative is based on three main premises. The first is that most of the intractable problems confronting Africa require regional solutions to complement national efforts. The second premise is that within Africa itself, there are successful localized approaches and solutions that can have wider application if opportunities are created for regional learning and adaptation. This is the premise of the imperative: “African solutions to African problems.” The third premise is that in order to stimulate and sustain African solutions to African problems, it is vital to have philanthropic resources that Africans themselves control. A self-sustaining African foundation that is efficiently managed and governed will have a transforming impact on Africans’ ability to set and pursue their own developmental agendas. It will also give Africa a visible and effective “seat at the table” within the global development community.

Two main trends provide an enabling environment for the initiative. The first is the democratic transitions now occurring across most of Africa. Africa has more democratic governments today than at any other time in the continent’s history and unconstitutional change of government is now widely condemned.Throughout Africa, democratic governance is becoming the norm, and there are more frequent free and fair elections. Civil society organizations and the independent media have grown exponentially, and most citizens have increased freedoms to express themselves politically. Second, African countries are increasingly seeking regional solutions to common challenges, as evidenced in the New Partnerships for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Although, regional cooperation is not new in Africa, there is now a strong sense of urgency as Africa grapples with the impact of globalization.

Program Focus

The initiative has started with a focus on three fundamental and closely inter-connected challenges: peace and security, practices related to citizenship and identity, and regional integration. Together, these three reflect the vision of a safer, freer and integrated Africa that can take its rightful place in global affairs. In pursuit of this goal, the initiative and the planned foundation are designed to:

The thematic areas are outlined as follows:

      Peace and Security: Nearly a third of Africa is engulfed in intractable violent conflicts, which have resulted in massive loss of life and human rights abuses, caused the collapse of state institutions, exacerbated corruption, aggravated the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and destroyed infrastructure. Although these conflicts usually start within states, they quickly draw in neighboring countries and have regional impact. As a result, the resolution of conflicts and peace-building/keeping often require robust political and diplomatic effort at the regional level. The Special Initiative has a two-fold approach to this challenge. First, we are supporting advocacy and participatory efforts to strengthen the African treaty system as it relates to peace and security, with a particular focus on the proliferation of small arms and light weapons and peace negotiations. Second, we are helping to build and sustain a community of closely collaborating civil society organizations that can effectively advance peace and security across the continent.

      Citizenship and Identity: Africans, like people everywhere, draw on myriad identities to give meaning to their lives and to define their interactions with each other. The policies and politics of African States have, however, tended to suppress ethnic, cultural, social and religious diversity and identities in the name of nation building and state sovereignty. Similarly, citizenship rights are severely constricted everywhere in Africa. Women and minorities of different kinds (migrants, refugees, gay and lesbian citizens, religious and ethnic minorities) suffer systematic discrimination, while political and religious sectarianism is rampant. Discrimination on account of citizenship and identity is a major cause of civil war and political instability in countries such as Sudan, Algeria, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, and Cote d'Ivoire. The initiative focuses on supporting the application of regional mechanisms, such as the African Commission for Human and People’s Rights, to secure the rights and identities of marginalized and vulnerable groups and populations. We are also helping to strengthen organizations that are exploring new and creative ways to move their societies beyond discriminatory practices based on citizenship and identity. Another goal is building strong public support for harmonizing national policies and legal systems with the non-discrimination provisions of existing regional treaties, such as the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and the African Union Protocol on Refugees.

      Regional Integration: Africa’s marginalization in the global economy (contributing a meager 1.1% to global trade for example) is coupled with serious impediments to African integration. In a paradoxical way, Africa is the most in accessible place for most ordinary Africans, who must endure severe obstacles as they cross the continent’s borders. While efforts at regional integration are not lacking, such efforts have been predominantly state-driven with very little participation by broader society. Regional integration treaties, therefore, often have no popular constituencies and are generally not fully enforced. The initiative is helping to address this in three ways. The first is support for multinational advocacy and monitoring to enforce regional treaties on the free movement of goods and people as a means of expanding opportunities for economic growth. Second, we are supporting efforts to build cross-regional partnerships between civil society organizations and inter-governmental agencies for regional integration. Third, we are helping to strengthen cultural factors and institutions that foster multinational cooperation and interaction.

Process and Strategies

The initiative is being developed in two phases. The first phase is a three-year period, starting in 2001 and ending in 2004. During this phase, we are conducting a series of Africa-wide consultative meetings, where a diverse group of African scholars, writers, public intellectuals, social movement activists, leaders of inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations and funders define the program agenda and help to shape the evolution of the initiative.

Based on these consultations, we have developed clusters of grants to test new ideas and strategies. Together, these grants link institutions across Africa to strengthen the enforcement of regional policies and treaties to address the challenges of peace and conflicts, regional integration, and citizenship and identity. The grants also establish a place for historically marginalized voices in this work, and document and disseminate knowledge about successful African approaches to these challenges. It is expected that by the end of the first phase of the initiative, we will have a cluster of thirty networked institutions working on the three themes of peace and conflicts, regional integration, and citizenship and identity. We will then focus on strengthening the institutional capacities of this critical mass of grantee partners, who are carefully selected from all sub-regions of Africa, on the basis of their programming record, convening authority, sound management systems, and links to both grassroots organizations and official institutions.

In the second phase of the initiative, starting in 2005, we will develop the institutional structures and processes to ensure the success of the initiative as an African institution with the resources and capacity to serve as convener, facilitator and grant-maker working for African regional solutions. The foundation will initially draw support from governments, the private sector and funders within and outside Africa.

Features of the Initiative

The special initiative and the planned foundation are committed to the following core values:

1.     African leadership in setting the agenda and strategies for solving African problems.

2.      Diversity and pluralism in all of its forms.

3.     The highest standards of institutional performance, management, and governance.

4.     Building and sustaining partnerships and learning across Africa and around best practices and successful approaches.

5.     Maintaining efficient operation of the planned foundation, and aiming for a budget ratio of 85-15 in favor of grants.

Concluding Remarks

In this era of increasing globalization, Africa now faces new challenges, which cannot be met by solutions invented and imposed by people outside the region. These challenges are most acute in some of the strategic locations such as Congo, Sudan, Angola, Ethiopia and Somalia, where external funders are not very active in any focused or long-term basis. The Special Initiative for Africa is designed to make a significant difference in this context. The initiative’s focus on the regional level enables Africa-wide learning and building on what works. Its strategy of broadening the sources of ideas from diverse groups and institutions has potential to democratize regional decision making in lasting ways and to help consolidate national democratic transitions. Its consultative and collaborative grantmaking represents a new approach that could help to level the playing field for genuine partnerships between African institutions and the donor community. Above all, its transition into a self-sustaining African foundation will help to significantly alter Africa’s dependency on external sources of ideas and support for African solutions.