Over the course of 2021-2024, Karibu will instigate a pilot project related to a new grantmaking program, currently known as the “Karibu New Realities Grant“.

The pilot aims to support bold, innovative, forward thinking, “constructive troublemaking”, and imaginative initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa that add new dimensions and makes stronger the collective struggle for systemic justice. Grants that eventually are provided in this pilot will support creative, strategic, agenda-setting, and network-building groups in Sub-Saharan Africa that are able to connect the local / national struggle with regional / global realities.

The project will take a participatory grant-making approach, where African activists themselves will define a majority of the criteria, reporting requirements, and not least the decisions of what initiatives receive grants within the bounds of this pilot project. All grants that are eventually awarded from this pilot project will be in line with overall vision, aims and objectives of the Karibu Foundation.

More information about applying for Cycle 2 can be found here.

Sub-Sahara Africa in focus

Africa continues to be at the forefront of Neo-colonialism, Neo-imperialism, and extractivism in many forms, with a wide range of old and emerging powers playing active roles in this exploitation.   This reality relates to many of the themes that Karibu is already working very closely with:  trade, militarism, climate justice, food sovereignty, and more.  

Africa continues also to be hit hard by the new realities of the post COVID-19 world, as vaccines are not expected to much of the continent before 2024 while much of the rest of the world already this year  “aims to move forward” after the pandemic.  Yet the consequences of the pandemic will continue to hit the global South (including Africa) the hardest.

Karibu (which means “welcome” in Swahili) also has its historic roots with close partnerships in Sub-Saharan Africa.   Many of the projects and partners Karibu supported in Africa over the past 35 years have been related to processes of a collective African voice in the struggle for justice, pan-Africanism, or in some way related to the “African Renaissance”.   Many of these processes, however, have either stalled, stopped completely, or have not reached the goals they had originally aimed to achieve (for various external and internal reasons).  There is also a clear generational shift occurring, with many of the previous generation of change actors now becoming the elders of movements.  

The pilot then aims to support the collective transition to a new courageous generation of actors as they continue the struggle for a just world and more just Africa. 

Vision for the pilot

Structure

Cycle 1 (2022)

Tentative Timeline

More info

Attached are additional information documents:

• Background Note (October 2021)
• Framework Document (July 2021)
• Powerpoint from info meeting for nominating organizations (August 2021)