Building the African narrative and practice in local philanthropy has become imperative in pushing for harnessing philanthropy as an additional tool for development in Africa. This quest has brought together hundreds of delegates from Africa and other parts of the world in Uganda to share experiences, new knowledge and collectively reflect on finding concrete actions to unlock philanthropy’s potential in driving social and systemic change at the 2022 African Philanthropy Network Assembly.
As a member of APN, STAR-Ghana Foundation’s Head of Programmes, Eunice R Agbenyadzi and Manager responsible for Results & Learning, Frank Kwaku Amoateng will speak in sessions focused on ‘Fostering an enabling environment for domestic resource mobilization: policy & practice’ and ‘Leveraging Communities of Practice to protect civic space and gain public trust for enhanced community philanthropy’ respectively.
Head of Programmes at STAR-Ghana Foundation, Eunice R Agbenyadzi at the 2022 APN Assembly
Moderated by Stigmata Tenga of the Africa Philanthropy Network (APN), the ‘Fostering an enabling environment for domestic resource mobilization: policy & practice’ session provides a space for peer learning on effective strategies to influence governments to adopt laws and regulations that enable domestic philanthropic giving and creating favourable conditions to promote the power of philanthropic giving as a form of and driver of systems change. Additionally, it will showcase specific field examples of community resource mobilization and philanthropic giving, while exploring what could be a driving force.
For his part, Mr Amoateng is expected to contribute to a session on exploring the opportunities available for CSOs in utilizing communities of practice as a platform for learning and sharing while collaborating to enhance lobby and advocacy initiatives to protect civic space. Speakers will also delve into the role of CoPs in lobbying for a favourable operating environment- internally and externally- that promotes accountability (Institutional and community) to promote community philanthropy. The session will enhance the participants’ understanding of CoPs? how to create and adopt them as an alternation strategy to strengthen community-based ecosystems for improving the recognition of philanthropic practices and shifting the power closer to communities.
Frank Kwaku Amoateng, Results & Learning Manager-STAR-Ghana Foundation
Giving for Change
STAR-Ghana Foundation is implementing a Giving for Change project funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Project among other objectives seeks to encourage, influence and develop enabling ecosystems for local philanthropy. The programme is designed to strengthen local ownership, buy-in and rights claiming, challenging the notion that development is something that is “done to” communities by external actors.
APN2022 Objectives
The objective of the 2022 APN Assembly is to provide a platform for members and other delegates from the continent and globally to actively engage with issues of agency facing African communities and how responsive are the African philanthropy practices, cultures and policies. Participants will use the space to celebrate ideas and share practical solutions of African generated and African owned philanthropy and make recommendations with concrete actions to unlock philanthropy’s potential in driving social and systemic change.
The Assembly’s Agenda
Both action and inspirational contexts will be combined into one; thus, positioning the 2022 Assembly into one that showcases durable examples of where and how Africans gives, and the African poor gives more! The identification of the Assembly agenda sessions is a co-creation of members of the networks, guided by the changes related to continent’s people & their institutions, policies and practices. The APN Assembly 2022 has been designed to offer participants a multi-dimensional and experiential approach, where each session provides an opportunity to connect with people, learn about the alternative financing mechanism for African challenges, talk about policies and fostering an enabling environment for philanthropy to thrive, and harness innovative solutions to catalyze the collective actions needed to transform the way development is done, and achieve systemic change.