Urgent Action Fund – Africa

CHALLENGE

Urgent Action Fund-Africa (UAF-Africa), a pan-African and feminist Fund was established in 2001 in Nairobi, Kenya. Using a rapid response grant-making (RRG) model, the Fund supports unanticipated, time sensitive, innovative and bold initiatives. While the Fund has done a lot of work in addressing critical and emergent women’s rights issues across the continent, the organisation’s visibility remains relatively low. Impressed by the work we were doing with Oxfam South Africa, UAF-Africa approached CREA8 International to assess and facilitate the development of its communication and advocacy strategy.

SOLUTION

Because the UAF-Africa team is dispersed globally and work is done virtually, CREA8 International forwent the in-person immersion process and relied on desktop research as well as Skype interviews with the team. We reviewed the state of movement-building for women’s human rights in Africa, focusing on funding opportunities, or the lack thereof, for such movements, and refined UAF-Africa’s unique position as an African donor organisation. We also analysed their brand identity, giving recommendations for redesign of key brand touch-points and website, as well as managing internal communications in a virtual office environment. Crea8 was able to recommend strong revisions to their communication strategy to increase the Fund’s visibility and awareness of their RRG programmes within the sector of women’s human rights in Africa.