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

The pilot aimed 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 were provided in this pilot supported 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 took a participatory grant-making approach, where African activists themselves defined 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 were eventually awarded from this pilot project were in line with overall vision, aims and objectives of the Karibu Foundation.

Background: Sub-Sahara Africa in focus

When the pilot was initiated in 2021, Africa continued 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 continued 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”.  

The pilot aimed 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

NOTHING ABOUT US
WITHOUT US

To express, also in
the Karibu grantmaking, the practical consequence of systemic change, of reorganising of power, of concrete expression of the values of ‘nothing about us without us’.

NEW MODELS OF ACTIVISM

To identify and provide resources for next generation / new models of activism, popular mobilisation and resistance, innovation and alternatives with the
view of contributing to systemic and system change (stopping the bad & building the new).

PARTICIPATION

To test out contemporary
ideas / models of
Participatory Grant
Making (PGM) as a pilot, across themes and national boundaries.

Structure

Highlights

Read more about highlights from Cycle 1 in our 2022 Annual Report.

Read more about highlights from Cycle 2 in our 2023 Annual Report.

Timeline

More info

Attached are additional information documents:

• Learning Site – KNRG Pilot (Coming soon)
• Background Note (October 2021)
• Framework Document (July 2021)
• Powerpoint from info meeting for nominating organizations (August 2021)