Network Building and Training services

The crisis of African development will not ease unless ordinary Africans, wherever they are, take more responsibility for and control over their own destiny. The African Foundation for Development (AFFORD) was formed to connect Africans and their organisations abroad working for the development of Africa and her peoples directly with organisations on the continent working towards the same goals. A key concern for AFFORD is that, although very active in the development process in their own unique ways, Africans in the west are generally marginalised from development debate and activities initiated by more mainstream international non-governmental and other organisations. Rather than reinventing the wheel in tackling these issues and deciding how best to intervene, AFFORD took the view that the most useful and sensible way to proceed would be to listen to and learn from the existing African organisations—both African-led NGOs and less formal grassroots organisations—about why they were formed, what sort of activities they engaged in, what they perceived as their strengths and weaknesses, how involved they were or would like to be in development work in Africa, what sort of relationships they had with other organisations, and what their future plans were. Hence this report.

This brief concept paper makes a proposal for the opening of channels of communication between diplomatic representatives of African governments based in the UK and segments of the UK’s increasingly diverse African communities, including civil society groups, businesses, faith communities, etc. Boldly stated, the proposal is to initiate an ongoing series of informal dialogue sessions between African diplomats and the African diaspora with a view to deepening the understanding of different sides’ respective viewpoints and perspectives. The presumption is that we are bound by shared visions for Africa’s long-term, self-reliant, self-sustaining and autonomous development as a key player in an increasingly globalising world. A key aim, surely, has to be the strengthening of Africa’s institutional capacity at all levels of society. To that end, the first challenge is to overcome hurdles created by misperceptions, distrust, lack of understanding, and at best sporadic communication and exchanges.

Awareness exists of ways in which diasporas link UK and overseas and recognition of the need to bridge gaps exists For some funders the need is to be creative and flexible about how they interpret their mandates, whether they have a UK, London or international remit (and to communicate this creativity and flexibility) Some funders and policy-makers need to embrace new ways of working that better reflect today’s complexities and realities in terms of how issues affect the people they are aiming to support Funders and policy-makers should collaborate more to tackle social challenges that blur traditional sectoral, departmental or geographical boundaries but to do this they need to be clear about why, what they are seeking to achieve, etc, and also remain within their legal limits, geographically and sectorally Policy-makers with both domestic and international remits are appreciating the two-way linkages between diasporas and their home regions; however, some need more convincing on the positive role of diasporas here in international development Diaspora communities need to be more proactive in putting ideas on funders’ agendas for them to take up (and they need to identify the fora where they can engage with funders) Diaspora communities need to conduct their own purposeful action research into more effective use of remittances, more cost/tax efficient means of transferring financial resources, how events back home impact upon them, how their activities here impact upon people back home, and how communities can enhance their capacity to deal with combined issues that affect them here and there.