We’re relaunching our grants programme to support African social entrepreneurs who are addressing problems at a systems level or with sustainable, innovative solutions.

These grants can be used as an unrestricted stipend, allowing entrepreneurs to focus fully on their work. Alternatively, they can serve as catalytic capital to help achieve specific goals, like research or prototyping.

We plan to partner with reputable capacity-building programs that already support African social entrepreneurs. This will allow us to quickly reach all 54 African countries without building distribution and monitoring infrastructure from scratch.

Partnering with Yali RLC

Our first strategic partnership will be with YALI RLC, helping us identify, support, and track the impact of young social entrepreneurs in:

... who receive Kwanda grants.

Who is the Yali RLC?

The YALI RLC (Young African Leaders Initiative Regional Leadership Center) is a leadership program for young African leaders aged 18-35.

They have trained over 7,800 young Africans across nine countries. YALI alumni have gone on to impact their communities through business and civic initiatives, equipped with a drive to give back and lead transformational change.

Piloting the partnership

To kick off the partnership and relaunch our grants program, we propose allocating $5,300 for grants (up to $2,000 each) for social entrepreneurs working on solutions in:

Budget

The grant period, from award to reporting, will run from November 2024 to March 2025.

YALI RLC will handle all administrative costs for supporting and monitoring grantees, while Kwanda will fund the grants exclusively.

Yali RLC's responsibilities:

• Providing grant winners with orientation on the award.

• Providing grant winners with capacity-building tailored to the grant to strengthen their chances of success.

• Providing feedback to unsuccessful applicants to improve future applications.

• Assigning staff and alumni to support successful applicants as “critical friends” in their projects.

• Monitoring and, when possible, visiting funded projects.

Expected outcomes and indicators to be reported:

• The number of grants funded

• The number of small business ventures going to scale

• The number of communities benefiting from grant activities