Across three days in Harare, RFLD\u2019s three-person delegation came away from the first annual NAFASI consortium meeting with a sharper sense of what the remaining 31 months actually demand \u2014 and of what it means, in practice, to build a continental coalition in a contested digital landscape. What follows are the substantive takeaways the delegation returned with.
\nReflection \u00b7 Harare, 23\u201326 June 2026
\nThere is a particular value in the annual consortium meeting that is harder to capture in a workplan: the value of putting the people who deliver the work in the same room and watching what happens. Five months into NAFASI implementation, the meeting in Harare was structured to balance strategic alignment with shared presence. RFLD was represented in Harare by a three-person delegation: Heuleche Tognonmegni, Abigael Olaleye, and Ashifie Gogo. The takeaways below summarise what shifted in the room.
\nCoordination is the work. The mock shutdown crisis coordination drill that Munya Dodo of Moto Labs ran across all partner members made it visible: NAFASI\u2019s value lies as much in the protocols between organisations as in any single activity any one of them delivers. The drill simulated a real-time digital emergency and asked the room to coordinate. The thing that surfaced \u2014 and that the consortium will continue to work on \u2014 is how much of the next 31 months depends on inter-organisational responsiveness rather than individual organisational capacity.
\nGender is the design, not the layer. RFLD\u2019s presentation on Gender Mainstreaming in NAFASI Programming reframed gender not as an additional consideration but as a measurement architecture applied to the very threats the drill had just modelled. The deliberate sequencing \u2014 coordination exercise followed immediately by methodological one \u2014 clarified that gender mainstreaming in NAFASI is not a thematic add-on but the lens through which the work is designed in the first place.
\nAfrican-owned infrastructure is the precondition. Paul Munatsi of Digital Society Africa made the case that data sovereignty and cloud independence are prerequisites \u2014 not afterthoughts \u2014 for resilient civic space. Given the dependency dynamics the consortium will work against, the argument landed with particular weight. It is the structural condition NAFASI\u2019s resilience programming rests on.
\nA walk through the woodland to close the day \u2014 together, offline, and present. The programme note made the intention explicit. The walk delivered on it.
\nGovernance and financial discipline set the operating standard. The Sub-Granting and Financial Management session, led by Magamba\u2019s Finance and Admin Team with the NAFASI Grants Officer, set out the compliance and disbursement architecture and an anti-corruption training that left no ambiguity about the standards the consortium will hold itself to. The open discussion of governance and decision-making, led by the NAFASI Programme Lead with input from DefendDefenders, RFLD, and Magamba, set the consortium\u2019s internal democracy.
\nThe story has to work in three languages. The Story We Want To Tell session \u2014 a Communications and Campaigns drill led by the NAFASI Storytelling Assistant \u2014 clarified that NAFASI is a continental story told in three regional voices, and the storytelling architecture has to work across English, French, and Portuguese without collapsing into the lowest-common-denominator phrasing that erases what is specific. RFLD\u2019s communications team left with a clear understanding of how the francophone narrative threads will articulate with the consortium\u2019s anglophone centre of gravity without being subordinate to it.
\nCivic infrastructure needs offline presence. The woodland walk that Magamba had built into the programme \u2014 a deliberately unstructured passage through the woodland \u2014 was not incidental. NAFASI exists to defend space, online and off, and the programme designers had read their own mandate carefully. Civic infrastructure is built by people who can also be present to each other in non-screen time.
\nCommitments are now on the table. The Pillar Sessions allowed each partner to work on the activities mapped to its strategic responsibility \u2014 for RFLD, the Feminist & Francophone Bridge work concentrated in Pillars 01 and 03. The Commitments Caf\u00e9, led by Aurra with all partners participating, was where each organisation tabled concrete commitments and timelines for the consortium to hold it accountable to. Memory Bandera\u2019s Outro & Next Steps summary captured the protocols that emerged.
\nFour things, primarily, came back with the delegation. A reaffirmed governance architecture that the consortium can navigate without ad hoc consultation on every operational question. A harmonised workplan for the year ahead that aligns RFLD\u2019s five activities with Magamba\u2019s and DefendDefenders\u2019 corresponding workstreams. A clarified financial and compliance framework for sub-granting and disbursement. And a working relationship across three organisational cultures that, by the time of the farewell dinner, had begun to operate as a single working body.
\nOne of the things that became visible across the three days was what each Implementing Partner brings as a distinct institutional identity \u2014 and what RFLD brings is specific. The organisation is a pan-African afrofeminist network with four registered country offices in Porto-Novo, Dakar, Accra, and Banjul, a member network of 670 organisations across 35+ African countries, and active programme delivery in 15+ countries. It holds ACHPR Observer Status No. 553\/2017 and engages all 55 African Union member states through continental policy hubs including D\u0186N\u00d9ES\u00c8, the Maputo Protocol Hub, and the ACDEG Hub. Its methodology \u2014 codified through the Gender Mainstreaming Tool \u2014 is owned, not licensed.
\nThat identity translated into a particular kind of presence in the room. The RFLD delegation was not at NAFASI to participate; it was there to deliver against a mandate that no other Implementing Partner can substitute for. The francophone and lusophone reach, the afrofeminist methodology, the continental diplomatic access, and the Women Human Rights Defender protection capacity \u2014 these are the four corners of RFLD\u2019s identity force.
\nThe cultural visit to Studio Moto, the Moto Republik tour, and Harare\u2019s cultural landmarks was the moment at which the consortium took the temperature of the place that anchors its lead applicant. Magamba Network is a creative-civic organisation rooted in Harare\u2019s artistic ecosystem, and seeing that ecosystem in person clarified for the RFLD delegation what is possible when civic, technical, and creative work share a single roof. It is an architecture that NAFASI will draw on across the continent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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