Collective Power in Action: The African Women’s Development Fund on Feminist Funding, Solidarity, and Movement Building

As Prospera marks 25 years of collective action, Resourcing Power Together highlights the experiences, lessons, and leadership of women’s and feminist funds across our network. In this conversation, we speak with Françoise Moudouthe, former Prospera Board Co-Chair and CEO of the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), about what it means to resource feminist movements, why Prospera is a home for feminist funds, and what the next 25 years can make possible.

Q: Tell us about the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF).

We are a feminist fund. We mobilize resources wherever they are and make them available to feminist movements across the African continent so they can do what they do best: bring gender justice to life for all on our continent.

We resource movements, strengthen and accompany them, uplift their voices, and amplify their messages, particularly within the donor community.

For us, it is important to approach this work in a very practical way. We fund initiatives across a wide range of issues, from women’s health to climate justice, while also supporting the architecture that sustains movements: organizing, solidarity, and care that keep movements together.

Q: For someone unfamiliar with women’s and feminist funds, how would you explain their role?

If you want to understand what feminist funds do, you first need to understand why they do it.

Our goal is to make gender justice a reality for all, and we believe that feminist movements are best placed to make that happen. They have the track record, the knowledge, the contextual understanding, and the proximity to communities. They are the ones.

Our goal is to make gender justice a reality for all, and we believe that feminist movements are best placed to make that happen.

We believe they need the resources to do that work. They have been doing so much for so long with so little. Our role is to position ourselves so that we can access resources, mobilize them, help direct them where they are needed, and provide the kind of support that allows movements to thrive.

Q: What does Prospera mean to you?

Prospera is the home for feminist funds.

Feminist funds are a very particular kind of institution. We sit somewhere between traditional donors and movements, with a unique and complex set of objectives.

Prospera is, first and foremost, a space for connection and joint strategizing. We show up together, we make plans together, and we move together.

It is also a place where we can mobilize collectively, especially when advocating with the donor community. And it is a resource for the funds themselves.

Just as with movements, togetherness is not a by-product of having the same goals. We need to invest in it. The coordination, the strategizing, the convening—this is what makes Prospera so important.

But Prospera is not just the Secretariat. We, the members, are Prospera.

Prospera is the home for feminist funds.

Q: As Prospera marks its 25th anniversary, what message would you like to share?

For Prospera’s 25th anniversary, I first want to say: be proud. Move with grace. Move with pride.

I am also looking forward to the next 25 years. This is a very difficult time for the work that we do, and I look forward to Prospera continuing to be the place where we can organize, align, strategize, and support one another.