A FOUNDATION EMPOWERING AFRICAN COMMUNITIES

The United States African Development Foundation (USADF) is an independent federal government agency that provides grants to marginalized individuals and groups in Africa. The organization operates in 21 Sub-Saharan Africa countries, and gives grants to develop and grow cooperatives at grassroot level. USADF’s primary aim is economic development that will create livelihood in African communities. Marginalized individuals or groups refers to people that are excluded or have very little access to economic advancement opportunities in their country. USADF particularly places strong focus on conflict and post-conflict communities, and especially women, youth and the disabled people within these communities.

USADF primarily works with marginalized grassroot communities in Africa, who own and run registered cooperatives. The organization has key stakeholders which it works with to create relevant growth and development structures for businesses. The stakeholders are partner organizations and Country Programme Coordinators (CPC’s). The partner organizations include governments, auditing and business consulting firms, and other non-governmental organizations. Country Programme Coordinators (CPC’s) are employees located at the 21 countries USADF operates in, and their main responsibilities are to assess the performance of grantees cooperatives, report performance to program directors, and to continuously monitor internal and external changes in local business environment.

There are many organizations offering development opportunities to African countries, but what make USADF unique is that it grows, develops and empowers the communities it operates in. To empower marginalized individuals and groups, USADF implements a pioneered participatory development model which fosters leadership and solutions made by Africans for their own businesses. This directly results in the grantees learning skills and obtaining knowledge to operate and manage their own cooperatives.

During grant development, projection targets are made and must be met by the organization awarded a grant. To measure results and performance, USADF requires that grantees report their business operations and performance quarterly. To help grantees with their performance report, USADF provides access to assistants who help compile this report. USADF also holds biannual meetings and also has Annual Performance Index (API) to monitor cooperatives ability in meeting projected targets.

Even though the USADF has a unique model which has contributed to its success, there are some key challenges of funding, bureaucracy, and performance measurement, it faces. The organization receives its funding from U.S Government, and in the past years USADF has been experiencing budget constraints, which is fueled by the global economic crises facing America and other countries. A probable solution to this challenge is that the organization could start to consider diversifying its funding sources, have a combination of public and private sector organization funders. Dealing with marginalized individuals and groups in remote areas, USADF still experiences challenges in measuring the socio-economic impact of the cooperatives it assists with grants. Performance measurement is important to know whether USADF is accomplishing its sets objectives. Improving the organizations performance analysis and measurement tools can result in better extraction of information and the USADF can be able to better measure its success in each country and in its overall African operations.

USADF’s biggest success is the empowerment and capacity building of the African people, through working with strategic partners. The model of capacity building and empowerment focuses on effectively engaging more grassroot level development of African cooperatives, and leaves a legacy of business development in Africa.