Fahamu is a not-for-profit organization supporting organizations and social movements championing progressive social change and human rights. With branches in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Senegal, and Kenya, Fahamu primarily engages with civil and human rights organizations through Pambazuka News, an online platform focusing on social justice. Additionally, they offer online courses on human rights and social justice and employ new technologies, including SMS, for information dissemination, lobbying, and interactions.[1]
Fahamu was established in 1997 by Firoze Manji, an exiled Kenyan activist, to address social justice and civil liberties issues with a focus on Africa. Initially, the organization operated from Manji's home. In 2000, Pambazuka News, an email newsletter providing a platform for discussion and the exchange of information on social justice in Africa, was launched.[2] It served as an alternative media source for concerned citizens and civil society organizations with limited access to the Internet. Pambazuka News features editorials, analyses, and opinion pieces, as well as summaries of websites and opinion pieces on various topics related to Africa, including human rights, conflict, refugees, gender, and culture. Most of the writing is from within Africa. The Oxford Learning Space offered online courses and CDs for social justice work.
The Adilisha Project was launched in 2001 with financial support from the European Commission, the British Department for International Development (DFID), and the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The University of Oxford received the grant from the EC, while Fahamu received grants from DFID and the IDRC. The objective of the project was to build the capacity of human rights organizations in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region in the areas of campaigning, organizational, and management capabilities. The project consisted of seven training modules, including fact-finding and investigation; leadership and management; campaigning and advocacy; financial management; use of the Internet; introduction to human rights; and monitoring and reporting on human rights violations.
In May 2002, Fahamu South Africa Trust was established in Durban, South Africa, with Firoze Manji, Vinesh Anil Naidoo, and Shereen Karmali as trustees and Vinesh Anil Naidoo serving as the executive director.
In July 2003, Fahamu Trust was registered in the United Kingdom as a charity (No. 1100304), with Belinda Allan, Paddy Coulter, Shereen Karmali, Colin Burton, and Firoze Manji on the Board of Trustees.
In May 2004, Fahamu joined the steering committee of the Solidarity for African Women's Rights (SOAWR) coalition and provided Pambazuka News pages and technological support to the coalition to raise public awareness about the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. Fahamu contributed to SOAWR's efforts to persuade governments to ratify the African Union Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa by publishing several special issues and using them as advocacy tools. Fahamu also set up a website for the coalition and developed a facility for people to support the protocol using mobile text messaging (SMS).
Fahamu has been recognized for its e-advocacy work, particularly its successful use of text messaging campaigns, which have been widely adopted in social justice work. In 2004, Fahamu received a Community Award for Innovations in the Use of SMS for Advocacy Work from AOL.
In December 2004, Fahamu signed an agreement with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to develop CD-ROMs on the prevention of torture and conflict prevention with translations into French, Spanish, and Russian. This was done in collaboration with the United Nations System Staff College, the Association for the Prevention of Torture, and the University of Oxford, to strengthen the capacity of national human rights institutions.
In the year 2005, Fahamu's main focus was still on social justice news dissemination and the Fahamu courses in conjunction with the University of Oxford's distant learning summer programs. The courses were put together with the assistance of experts in the human rights field and consultants from the University of Oxford. At this time, Fahamu had created a unique niche and was well known for its online courses for non-governmental organizations and organizations dealing with human rights and related material.
In 2005, Fahamu had 12 staff members worldwide, 5 volunteers, and 1 intern. Outside the United Kingdom office were: Patrick Burnett in South Africa, Online News Editor, Pambazuka News; Stella Chege, Project Worker, Kenya (there was no physical address at the time); Sokari Ekine, African Blogs Editor, Pambazuka News; Anil Naidoo, Director, Fahamu SA; and Atieno Ndomo, Regional Correspondent, Pambazuka News.
In May 2005, Fahamu's African Union Monitor was established. The AU Monitor website and associated mailing list aimed to strengthen the ability of civil society organizations to engage constructively with the African Union to promote justice, equity, and accountability. The website would give African CSOs a platform on which they could engage constructively with the AU and its organs from a well-informed point of view.
Pambazuka News, over this period, experienced a substantial growth in its readership, reaching an estimated 100,000 people in Africa and beyond, becoming effectively the leading forum for human rights defenders and others working on social justice in Africa.
2005 would also see Fahamu's first book publication, African Voices on Development and Social: Editorials from Pambazuka News 2004, by Firoze Manji and Patrick Burnett.
The Fahamu SA Trust office closed in October 2005 due to a shortage of funds. Consequently, Van's tenure as executive director ended. Van would, however, continue as a trustee of Fahamu SA. Fahamu SA would go on to move to a new address in Cape Town, in Pambazuka News and Information Coordinator Patrick Burnett's home address.
Stella Chege, a Kenyan project worker, would establish the Nairobi office in 2006. Stella had met Firoze Manji, the founder, while undertaking her master's studies in the UK. She was a volunteer with the Fahamu UK office then. She expressed her desire to return home to Kenya and thus initiated the plan for finally actualizing a Fahamu Nairobi office. Stella Chege did the scouting and worked out the formalities of starting a Fahamu office in Nairobi when she came to Kenya. Fahamu was registered in Nairobi in 2006. On the tail end of the year, the Nairobi office would explore its mandate in the region with a keen interest in working with social movements. The model at this point was the training of trainers. This would also include building the capacity of community leaders involved in the fields of advocacy and human rights. In some instances, the training and courses were ad hoc.
In Nairobi, 2007 was the year that Fahamo, away from a period-based organization, began its structure with the introduction of the AU monitoring program as a result of Fahamo being part of the SOAWR network. The mission of the AU Fahamu observer was to analyze the actions and activities of the African Union and to disseminate these analyses as degraded consumer information.
In this same year, the strategy of Fahamu on the African continent and abroad was considered. Fahamu would seek to expand its presence in Africa.
Fahamu Nairobi's initial project with the African grassroots constituent involved the hosting of West African women's community groups attending the World Social Forum in Nairobi in 2007. Yves Niyiragira and Winnie Kariuki would render their time as volunteers, helping Stella with logistics and other particulars leading up to the World Social Forum.
During this period at the WSF, Fahamu Nairobi was launching the first of the series on China in Africa. Publishing and press were all done in the UK office, Oxford Cornmarket Street. Fahamu Oxford was mostly dealing with the press at the time, Pambazuka, and the Fahamu online courses.
The courses were marketed in Nairobi, where institutions and civil society groups were approached to garner interest in Fahamu's courses, particularly the online modules. The three major courses marketed by the Nairobi office at the time were Fundraising and Resource Mobilization, Introduction to Human Rights, and Investigating and Reporting on Human Rights Violations.
The genesis of programmatic work dealing with projects in Africa was in the Nairobi office. This was prompted especially by the need to have an office based in Africa since the Fahamu mandate, as a pan-African organization, was to be primarily dedicated to African issues.
Shortly after the WSF, Fahamu with Tactical Tech facilitated a mobile activist workshop, which attracted IT specialists involved in advocacy from across the continent and beyond. This workshop was meant to show how technology, especially cellular technology, could be utilized for advocacy. It was also a networking platform that aimed to establish an African regional network of social justice activists who use mobile phone technologies. The workshop would culminate in the development of a mobile activism toolkit from the contributions of the workshop participants and other experienced NGO practitioners.
Throughout the period between 2006 and 2007, the Dakar office was mostly engaged in the production of the French version of Pambazuka News. It wasn't until 2010 that "We are the Solution" a grassroots women's food sovereignty project, was started in Dakar.
In 2007 and going into 2008, Fahamu was able to offer scholarships for some of its online courses through a grant to about 30 participants.
Initially, the Fahamu Nairobi offices were in Shelter Afrique, Mamlaka Road, and later moved to Peponi Plaza Westlands, where they have been to this very day. Hakima Abbas joined Stella and Winnie in the Nairobi office in 2007 from Witness in New York; she had also participated in the Mobile Tool Kit workshop as one of the facilitators. Hakima would work on the AU monitor with Yves.
Fahamu's engagement with grassroots movements expanded with the Leadership and Management course for rural women through Maendelo ya Wanawake and Hakima's AU Monitor, which successfully created an interactive platform with the Bunge La Mwananchi movement and other grassroots activists. With Alice Nderitu as the Education for Social Justice director, there was a project for community training on leadership, communication, and advocacy hosted by the Center for Multiparty Democracy. The activist Rachel Kabeberi hosted this.
In 2008, Fahamu was still doing courses in the process of program expansion (there was a move to promote residential courses in 2008). These programs would later be defined as the Fahamu Pillars.
Fahamu's work would intensify continentally. Besides working with Pambazuka News, the South African office would also play an integral role in the Emerging Powers program. It was at this time that Fahamu projects would take clearly defined shapes into thematic programs and would fully be established into pillars by 2010, becoming what they are today. Fahamu also experienced an expansion of staff with the growing programs.
Education for Social Justice was then run by Adilisha's Alice Nderitu; AU projects received funding and took flight; Yves was working with other regional partners like Trust Africa and the Heinrich Boll Foundation along the AU lines.
During 2009 and 2010, Fahamu underwent a restructuring process to modify its funding strategy. In 2009, discussions centered around the notion of ensuring the successful transfer of oversight and general organizational direction of the organization to African nationals in a sustainable manner. The senior management team consisted of the editor in chief of Pambazuka News, the director of Tuliwaza, the finance director, and the executive director. This team collectively decided the organization's direction. The senior management team determined that the organization needed to achieve financial independence. The executive director at the time, Firoze Manji, believed that the organization should prioritize creating a business model where the sale of books, news material, and advertising space would be the main sources of income. Manji resigned from the directorship position and continued serving as the editor in chief of Pambazuka News. Rebecca Williams, the Finance Director, assumed the role of interim executive director in Oxford, while Hakima Abbas served as her deputy in Nairobi, Kenya. Abbas later became the executive director and was the first director to operate from the Nairobi office. In 2011, George Mwai took over the Adilisha Fellowship Program from Alice Nderitu. During Hakima Abbas's tenure as deputy ED, the programmatic definitions were grouped into pillars under defined themes of concern.
Fahamu's strategy over the coming years is to:
Fahamu publishes Pambazuka News, which is an open-access, pan-African email and online newsletter available in English, French, and Portuguese. It has around 15,000 subscribers and an estimated weekly readership of 500,000 people, mostly in Africa. In 2007, the Pambazuka News published its 300th issue.[3] The publication includes audio and visual content with commentary and debate from social justice movements throughout the continent. Additionally, Fahamu produces special reports, which are available for download on the Pambazuka website or published in Pambazuka News. In May 2005, Fahamu established the African Union Monitor, a website and associated electronic mailing list that provides timely and high-quality information to civil society organizations to engage constructively with the African Union and promote justice, equity, and accountability.
Pambazuka Press, previously known as Fahamu Books, is a publishing house located in Nairobi, Cape Town, Dakar, and Oxford. They publish books written by African academics, public intellectuals, and activists on various topics such as human rights, social justice, politics, and advocacy.
In addition to publishing books, Fahamu also produces training materials on CD-ROMs to assist civil society organizations in Africa with promoting and protecting human rights, as well as improving their sustainability and effectiveness. Some of these materials are available as tutored online courses. They have collaborated with several organizations, including Food First, Grassroots International, Focus on the Global South, Mkuki na nyota, Oozebap, the South Centre, and SOAWR, in their publishing efforts.
Fahamu offers training programs and develops materials to strengthen the capacity of African human rights and social justice movements. The organization also runs courses, including distance learning, to help civil society organizations in Africa promote and protect human rights and become sustainable and effective. In partnership with institutions such as the University of Oxford[5] and MIT, Fahamu provides education and training programs.
In 2004, Fahamu joined the Solidarity for African Women's Rights (SOAWR), a coalition of 30 women's and international organizations, with the aim of promoting the ratification of the African Union's Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. Fahamu supported the coalition by providing pages in Pambazuka News and technological support to raise public awareness about the protocol across the continent, helping women bring pressure on their governments to adopt it. The campaign was successful, with 15 countries ratifying the protocol within 15 months.
During the post-election violence in Kenya in December 2007, [6] Fahamu supported independent and progressive voices in Kenya by becoming actively engaged in the Kenyans for Peace through Truth and Justice coalition.[7] In April 2008, Fahamu-Kenya was involved in the Direct Action Training workshops[8] initiated by Shailja Patel. Fahamu-Kenya is now collaborating with Bunge la Mwananchi [9] to train grassroots activists on effective advocacy.
Fahamu has established a collaborative network of community radio stations, radio journalists, and cartoonists with the African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) to develop a range of radio plays, current affairs broadcasts, and cartoon books on the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. These will be disseminated in West and East Africa.[10]