The African Philanthropy Forum (APF), the Collective Change Lab (CCL), and the Bertha Centre at the University of Cape Town (UCT) have co-created an initiative, What Systems Change Means in an African Context, as a year-long process for African philanthropists and social change leaders to not only contribute to but to actively shape the global discourse on systems change, firmly anchored in African perspectives, African lived experience, and African stories.
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Want to know more about the Africa Philanthropy Learning Community? Find out more about the journey and meet the learning community members or explore our resources including session synopsis papers.
The initiative will virtually convene a peer learning community from April 2023 - April 2024:
the learning community will be composed of 10 - 12 African philanthropists and foundation executives;
Members of the learning community will meet for facilitated two-hour virtual sessions every four - six weeks. While the virtual sessions themselves are held under “Chatham House rules” to encourage candid dialogue, key themes and emerging insights from the confidential discussions will be distilled, circulated to the learning community members for approval, and then disseminated to a broader set of audiences in Africa and the global north across a range of fora and mediums, including conferences, journals, blogs, podcasts, webinars, newsletter subscriber lists of the three co-creators, and more.
Circulating emerging insights on a regular basis across a variety of audiences creates transparency and trust, and ensures that members of the What Systems Change Means in an African Context initiative will influence the global discourse on systems change. For example, APF, CCL, and UCT, together with our funding partners, will create opportunities for members of both learning communities to co-author articles and blogs, speak in webinars to share their perspective and learnings, and showcase African examples of systems change to global audiences.
“Systems change gets defined elsewhere and we’re expected to adopt it without defining it for ourselves. I want to be a part of creating definitions that work in our context.”
A highlight reel of the six sessions of the Africa Philanthropy Learning Community - co hosted by the Collective Change Lab, the African Philanthropy Forum and the Bertha Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Cape Town