AWURA Project: Baseline and Context Analysis

1. Who we are

Urgent Action Fund-Africa (UAF-Africa) is a feminist, pan-African Rapid Response Fund committed to transforming power relations through resourcing African feminists and women's human rights defenders and their formations as an act of solidarity. Recognising the need to move resources rapidly on a continent where opportunities and threats arise and decline quickly, UAF-Africa uses a Rapid Response Grant making mechanism to support unanticipated, time-sensitive, innovative, and unique initiatives that promote women's agency in peace and political participation, social and economic power building, as well as natural resources governance and stewardship. The Fund works to support African Women's Human Rights Defenders (AWHRDs), particularly in the feminist and women's rights movements, in their actions, which enable them to support and sustain themselves, each other, and their work before, during, and after urgent situations.

UAF-Africa mobilises resources from a broad base of international and increasingly local funders committed to protecting and advancing women's rights and feminist agendas in Africa. Our primary purpose is to provide funding to AWHRDs and their groups, organisations and the movements to help them prepare for and navigate urgent situations with appropriate actions.

UAF-Africa is registered in Kenya and Zimbabwe. The Fund boasts of strategic physical presence in East Africa: North Africa; Cairo, Egypt; Nairobi (Kenya), Kampala (Uganda); Central Africa: Douala & Yaoundé (Cameroon); Southern Africa: Harare (Zimbabwe), Lilongwe (Malawi), Antananarivo (Madagascar); Johannesburg, Pretoria & Cape Town (South Africa), Gaborone (Botswana), and West Africa: Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

2. Background

The Africa Women United for Digital Rights and Autonomy (AWURA) consortium is made up of seven partners, namely, The Coalition on Violence Against Women (COVAW), Defenseurs Sans Frontieres (DSF), Femme Plus, Musasa Project, Association for Women's Rights in Developmant (AWID) and The Engine Room and UAF-Africa. It is a multi-year initiative to be implemented in Cameroon, Kenya, Togo and Zimbabwe with support from Agence Française de Développement (AFD). The project seeks to strengthen feminist CSOs, women's rights organisations and local actors to prevent and respond to technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV), advocate for safer and more equitable digital environments, and build evidence-informed strategies for survivor-centred care, feminist documentation, grantmaking and policy engagement. The baseline and context analysis will therefore provide the evidence needed to understand current conditions, capacities, gaps and opportunities in each project country before implementation moves forward.

To this end, the consortium is seeking to engage four consultants, one per country, to conduct country context analyses and baseline studies for AWURA in Cameroon, Kenya, Togo, and Zimbabwe. Each consultant will be responsible for a single assigned country, ensuring that the analysis is grounded in the country's specific legal, policy, social, and digital contexts while contributing to a