“Portuguese-speaking Africa is not on the margins of Africa’s feminist movement. It is an essential part of it.”
Across Africa, feminist movements have long challenged systems of inequality, responded to crises, created new possibilities for minoritized and excluded communities. Philanthropy has been integral to advances toward just and equal African societies. Yet within the current global and continental landscape of feminist philanthropy, some communities and movements remain largely unseen.
The Portuguese-speaking African countries that include Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea and São Tomé and Principe, represent diverse histories, political realities and social contexts. Their feminist movements are dynamic, innovative and deeply rooted in their communities. They are advancing gender justice in contexts shaped by economic deprivation and inequality, climate change, difficult democratic transitions, shrinking civic space and gender-based violence.
Despite this important work, these movements continue to face significant barriers to accessing resources, networks and spaces where Africa’s feminist priorities are shaped. The challenge is not a lack of organizing. It is a fragmented funding ecosystem that has not yet fully recognized or responded to the diversity of Africa’s feminist movements.
The cost of being overlooked
“This is not simply a language issue. It is a question of equity, power, and whose movements are seen as worthy of sustained investment.”
Language is often treated as a technical issue within philanthropy. But colonial imagined and erected linguistic borders, in reality, determine who participates, whose knowledge is shared, and which movements can access opportunities. Many continental funding opportunities, convenings, research publications and learning spaces are designed primarily in English or, to a lesser extent, French. Organizations from Portuguese-speaking countries frequently face additional costs related to translation, interpretation and participation — costs that are rarely built into funding models.
The result is a structural barrier: organizations with valuable expertise and strong community connections may remain disconnected from funding opportunities, regional conversations and shared learnings, not because of limited impact but because systems were not designed with their inclusion in mind. For philanthropy, this raises a fundamental question: What does meaningful inclusion look like when funding systems themselves create barriers to participation?
Listening before investing
At the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), we recognized that addressing this gap required more than acknowledging the challenge. It required listening, evidence and a deeper understanding of how feminist movements in Portuguese-speaking Africa organize, sustain themselves and envision their futures.
AWDF undertook a mapping of feminist movements and funding landscapes across Portuguese-speaking Africa to better understand not only the barriers facing these movements, but also the opportunities for philanthropy to engage differently. We asked: What does feminist organizing and funding actually look like across Portuguese-speaking Africa, and what would it take to strengthen these movements for the long term?
The findings provide an important reminder that communities and movements that have historically been overlooked are not waiting to be built. They are already organizing, innovating and creating solutions. What is needed is a funding ecosystem that recognizes their leadership and invests accordingly.
Feminist movements creating new pathways for change
Across the region, feminist organisations are demonstrating resilience, creativity, and strategic vision. There is growing interest in stronger Portuguese-speaking feminist networks that can support collective advocacy, shared learning, and cross-border solidarity. Storytelling and creative expression are being used as powerful organising tools, particularly among younger activists and in rural communities, allowing feminist narratives to emerge from local experiences and knowledge. For example, our research shows that in São Tomé and Príncipe, informal associations are playing a vital role in mobilising communities through door-to-door outreach and storytelling, while in Equatorial Guinea, feminist collectives are using storytelling, dance, and performance as vehicles for feminist expression and consciousness-raising.
Intergenerational mentorship is strengthening connections between established feminist leaders and emerging activists. Diaspora communities are crucial in bridging advocacy and resource gaps. Organizations are increasingly embracing intersectional approaches that centre disability justice, queer rights, racial justice, and the experiences of historically marginalized communities. Partnerships with universities and public institutions also show that feminist movements are not only challenging unequal systems, but they are also contributing to the creation of more just ones.
From access to power: changing the role of philanthropy
“Feminists in Portuguese-speaking Africa must not only be invited into existing conversations; they must be supported to shape them.”
A more equitable feminist funding ecosystem requires a shift in how philanthropy understands partnership. Inclusion cannot simply mean translating existing opportunities into Portuguese after decisions have already been made. It means ensuring Portuguese-speaking feminists shape priorities, strategies, and funding approaches from the beginning.
This requires investing in leadership, supporting participation in regional and global spaces, strengthening knowledge production in Portuguese, and creating funding models that recognize accessibility as a core principle of justice. It also requires moving beyond short-term, project-based funding toward flexible, long-term support that enables organizations to build sustainable institutions, respond to emerging challenges, and invest in movement infrastructure.
AWDF’s mapping is an important step toward shifting the narrative. By documenting the experiences of feminist organizations, amplifying activists’ voices, and generating evidence about funding realities, the findings provide funders with a stronger foundation for accountability and action. Evidence allows philanthropy to move beyond assumptions and engage with the realities of movements themselves. It helps identify gaps, recognize existing strengths, and design strategies that support locally led solutions. But evidence alone does not create change. The responsibility now lies with funders to translate knowledge into action.
Building a feminist funding ecosystem for all of Africa
A truly pan-African feminist movement must reflect the continent’s full diversity—its languages, histories, cultures, and experiences. Portuguese-speaking Africa cannot continue to be treated as a region requiring occasional translation or adaptation of knowledge produced elsewhere. It must be recognised as a vital part of Africa’s feminist ecosystem with its own knowledge, political analysis, and movement culture that shape its agendas. This requires a deliberate commitment to language justice, investing in multilingual approaches from the outset rather than as an afterthought, and creating spaces where movement actors can participate, organise, and exchange knowledge in the languages in which they think, create, and mobilise. Language justice must enable meaningful participation, agenda setting, and knowledge ownership so that linguistic differences do not determine whose perspectives are heard, whose knowledge is preserved, or whose priorities shape the agenda.
This means investing in regional infrastructure, supporting locally led knowledge production, strengthening networks, and building trust-based relationships. The future of African feminism depends not only on increasing resources, but on distributing them more equitably. It depends on ensuring that language is never a barrier to solidarity, geography is never a reason for exclusion, and every feminist movement has the opportunity to shape Africa’s collective future.
The question is not whether Portuguese-speaking Africa belongs in Africa’s feminist movement. It does. The question is whether our funding systems are ready to reflect that reality.
Find Portuguese version here. Feature photo of women in cultural attire in Luanda, Angola by Cardoso Lopes Lopes/Pexels.
Nana Zulu is the interim Chief Executive Officer at the African Women’s Development Fund.