African Foundation for Development
The latter half of the 2011-12 academic year has seen a new and growing collaboration between CAS and the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD-UK), an African diaspora NGO based in the UK which conducts lobbying and advocacy on the role of the African Diaspora in Africa’s development, and also runs social enterprise and business support programmes in West Africa through its sister organisation in Sierra Leone (AFFORD-SL).
CAS Collaboration with AFFORD
AFFORD and CAS held an important one day conference on 30th April 2012 on Impact Funding through the Diaspora, which brought together diaspora organisations involved in development grant-makers from the UK, EU, and Africa. The aim of this event was to enable grant-making organisations to understand better the needs and pressures facing the diaspora sector in the UK, and for diaspora organisations to have an improved understanding of the constraints faced by grant-makers in terms of ensuring value for money, transparency, and compliance in how their funds are managed. The event was well attended with over 250 delegates from the public, voluntary, and diaspora sectors, and included speakers from funders such as DfiD, Comic Relief, Big Lottery Fund, Southern Africa Trust, and the Barings Foundation, as well as leading academics in this field from SOAS and CASS Business School, and diaspora organisations such as FORWARD and SACOMA.
CAS, AFFORD, and the Royal African Society also supported the launch of the SOAS African Development Forum (ADF), an initiative set up by postgraduate students of development at SOAS which seeks to create a space for discussion of African development issues by practitioners, academics, and students. ADF held its inaugural event at the Brunei Gallery on 29th May 2012, on theme of ‘Africa – Driving its own Growth’, bringing together African business leaders, leading academics, and development practitioners.
Following on from the annual Africa Diaspora Development Day (AD3) that takes place in July, AFFORD in partnership with CAS held a one-day conference at the Brunei Gallery on 7th July 2012, entitled ‘Building the Africa-Gives Platform’, which was attended by over 120 young African diaspora professionals and students. ‘Africa-Gives’ is led by young people from the diaspora, and the aim of this event was to work with young people to build a platform for ‘Africa Gives’ and develop key priorities for this over the coming year. Speakers included Hon. Chuka Umunna MP, Herman Chinnery-Hesse (Founder & Chair of Softribe, Ghana), Susan Kagondu (Rockefeller), Boko Inyundo (Lewis Silkin LLP), and Jacqueline Shaw (Founder, AfricaFashionGuide). For more information on ‘Africa-Gives’, please see www.africa-gives.org .
Africa Europe Platform and Research on Good Practice in Diaspora Development
AFFORD is one of five European diaspora and civil society organisations involved in the delivery of the ‘European-Wide African Diaspora Platform for Development’ (EADPD), a programme supported by the EC, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the German Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). The aim of EADPD is to promote the contribution of the diaspora to the development of Africa through the creation of a network of the African diaspora in Europe, the Africa-Europe Platform’ or AEP. This is a network of African diaspora organisations and networks from the 27 EU Member States plus Switzerland and Norway. Through the Platform, the capacity of the African diaspora in Europe to contribute to Africa’s development will be made visible and enhanced, providing an innovative space to share knowledge, accumulate ideas and create strategies together to participate meaningfully in the development cooperation process in Africa.
As part of the EADPD project, AFFORD are responsible for conducting an online consultation on what constitutes good practice in diaspora development in the EU, with the aim of producing a Good Practice Guide for diaspora organisations and development agencies.CAS successfully bid to deliver this short research project in the summer of 2012, and the research is due to be completed in autumn 2012.
For more information on EADPD and AEP, visit www.ae-platform.org.
For a summary of the research you can read Best Practices for Diaspora Organizations.
