Just over month ago, the Wits Business School announced collaboration with the Southern Africa Trust to establish a first for the continent– an academic Chair in African Philanthropy.  

Last March, a small group of social justice philanthropy thinkers and advocates gathered for a 2 day meeting at the sidelines of the WINGS Conference in Istanbul, Turkey. Participants were mainly from Africa but we also had a few from the diaspora and the global SJP community. The meeting was a culmination of offline and online conversations and conference calls that had been going on throughout 2013 and the felt need for getting together to consolidate and build consensus on how best to carry the group's work forward. The offline conversations include the discussions at the AFF and AGN convenings in Cairo, Egypt and Johannesburg, SA respectively in 2012 and the EAAG Conference in 2013 in Mombasa, Kenya. These were complimented by bilateral ongoing conversations. The decision to have a substantive working meeting was made in October 2013.

We are excited to share this interview with Halima Mahomed from the latest edition of WINGS Dispatch.

Halima talks to Chris de la Torre about the importance of including women's voices in setting development and philanthropy agendas.

Read the full interview with Halima here.

On Friday 13th December at 16:00 – 17:00 GMT, join @awdf01 the twitter handle for the African Women’s Development Fund, (AWDF) for a twitter conversation on African philanthropy with @TheoSowa , AWDF’s Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the African Grantmakers Network (AGN).

Let’s talk about African philanthropy, how we give back, build communities, and strengthen institutions. Let’s talk about women in philanthropy. Let’s talk about African grant makers.

Join @awdf01 in this conversation by tweeting your questions on Friday 13th December, 16:00-17:00 GMT to @awdf01. Share your thoughts on African philanthropy with the hashtag #AWDFChat