RFLD Dakar: The Institutional Anchor for West African Feminist Movement Operational with Impact

The Réseau des Femmes Leaders pour le Développement (RFLD) a regional consultation at the RFLD Dakar Office on 16 June 2026, an afrofeminist convening on the protection of Women Human Rights Defenders in West Africa. The Dakar office is RFLD’s fourth regional anchor alongside the offices in Porto Novo, Accra and Banjul. The operational decision to establish institutional presence in Senegal reflects a deliberate analytical choice: regional architecture must be anchored in country level realities, and the protection of West African women defenders requires sustained operational presence in the geographies where the work is done.
The Réseau des Femmes Leaders pour le Développement (RFLD) convened on 16 June 2026 a high-level afrofeminist consultation on the protection of Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) in West Africa. The convening, titled Solidarity, Protection and Lineage of Resistance, was held in the RFLD Dakar Office hall, located on the 5th and 6th floors of Résidence “AW 06”, Cité Keur Gorgui, in the Senegalese capital.

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It gathered approximately thirty representatives whose articulated engagement shapes the protection environment available to women defenders across the West African region. Women Human Rights Defenders invited from across the West African region, including from the Sahelian and transitional governance contexts of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Guinea, were present alongside leading Senegalese feminist civil society organisations.

The Dakar office’s working address, on the 5th and 6th floors of Résidence “AW 06” in Cité Keur Gorgui, sits in one of Dakar’s central institutional corridors, within proximity of the Senegalese government, the diplomatic missions, and the regional offices of the United Nations system. The location is operational, not symbolic: it places RFLD’s West African work within walking distance of the institutional actors with whom the network engages on a sustained basis.
From this address, the Dakar team coordinates RFLD’s engagement with Senegalese feminist civil society, with the ECOWAS framework, with the Sahelian protection environment, and with the diplomatic and multilateral cooperation present in Senegal. The 16 June consultation marked the operational inauguration of this architecture in its working posture. Women human rights defenders from across the West African region were physically present in the Dakar office. Senior Senegalese feminist civil society organisations were at the table.

The two principal institutional donors of RFLD’s West African work, GIZ and Sida, attended the consultation as cooperation partners. The diplomatic missions active in Senegal participated alongside senior representatives of the Government of the Republic of Senegal. Mr Naji Moulay Lahsen of CIDH Sahel and North Africa joined the conversation, alongside senior journalists covering the human rights beat. The convening modelled what an operational regional anchor is meant to produce: a working space in which the actors who shape protection in the region engage one another directly, in real time, on the substance of the work.

The consultation gathered a deliberate cross section of actors whose engagement most decisively shapes the protection environment for women defenders in West Africa. Continental institutional weight was represented by Hon. Prof. Remy Ngoy Lumbu, ACHPR Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Focal Point on Reprisals in Africa, and former Chair of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Mr Naji Moulay Lahsen, CIDH Sahel and North Africa Director, contributed the additional cross regional perspective bridging the Sahel and the North African human rights context. Independent senior expertise came from Mme Hannah Forster, former Executive Director of the African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies (ACDHRS, Banjul); from Pr. Mabassa Fall, jurist and senior expert of the African human rights system; and from M. Sadikh Niass, senior Senegalese human rights leader.

Bilateral diplomatic missions active in Senegal participated alongside the consultation. Two of RFLD’s institutional donors, GIZ and Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation), attended the convening as cooperation partners. From GIZ Senegal, Mme Katja Roeckel, Country Director, joined the consultation. H.E Catharina Cappelin, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Sweden to Senegal, was present on behalf of the Swedish diplomatic mission, accompanied by Mme Khady Touré, Programme and Political Officer at the Embassy of Sweden in Dakar. Senior representatives of the Government of the Republic of Senegal also participated in the consultation.

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Senegalese feminist civil society organisations participated at senior level. Senior journalists covering the African human rights and civil society beats were present in the room, contributing the media witnessing layer of the protection architecture available to defenders. RFLD was represented at senior level by M. John GBENAGNON, Regional Strategy and Development Director, while the main discussions on behalf of RFLD were led by M. Bathor Seck, RFLD Country Representative for Senegal.
RFLD is an African feminist intermediary, conceived, governed and led by African women, and its institutional architecture is the product of the analytical and political work of African feminism. The partnership between RFLD and European donors is best understood as accompaniment to that work, not as its origin. Within this relationship of peers, European bilateral cooperation has accompanied the network with the multi year, flexible and trust based modalities that feminist movement infrastructure actually requires, in a manner that respects the network’s autonomy of analysis and decision.

The institutional architecture that RFLD has built and continues to lead, namely the four offices in Porto Novo, Accra, Banjul and Dakar; the 670 member organisations across more than 35 African countries; the WAFFF Fund and the Africa Portfolio Grant as continental re granting facilities that reach grassroots feminist organisations directly; the DƆNÙESÈ Data Center as a public good comprising twelve open bilingual policy tools for African civil society; the rapid response capacity for women human rights defenders facing acute threat; the State of African Francophone Feminist Movements report as a continental analytical reference; and the strategic guidance positions such as the co-chairmanship of the SEA-T Programme Advisory Council, has all been built by RFLD itself.

The impact of European donor support, in this sense, is the accompaniment that allows this African feminist work to be done at scale, and the protection environment around women human rights defenders to be addressed with the institutional weight the moment requires. The continuing presence of GIZ and Sida in the Dakar room reflected this sustained partnership of peers, and the two flagship engagements described below demonstrate how it is operationalised in practice.

Two of RFLD’s institutional donors were present at the Dakar consultation. Germany was represented through the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the implementing partner of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), by Mme Katja Roeckel, Country Director GIZ Senegal. Sweden was represented through the Embassy of Sweden in Dakar by H.E Catharina Cappelin, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Sweden to Senegal, accompanied by Mme Khady Touré, Programme and Political Officer; Sweden’s institutional support to RFLD is channelled through Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The presence of both donors in the room reflected the sustained partnership of peers that Germany and Sweden have built with RFLD over multiple cycles of institutional cooperation.

RFLD, Réseau des Femmes Leaders pour le Développement, is a pan African afrofeminist intermediary with four offices in Porto Novo, Accra, Banjul and Dakar. The network holds ACHPR Observer Status N°553 and is a sitting Member of the Working Group of the ACHPR Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders.

RFLD currently serves as co-chair of the SEA-T Programme Advisory Council, the strategic guidance body for the Society. Equality. Africa – the Transformation (SEA-T) programme, also funded by Germany’s BMZ and implemented by GIZ. The mandate of the Advisory Council is to provide strategic guidance to ensure that SEA-T’s direction, priorities and resources are meaningfully aligned with the visions of afro feminist civil society. The Dakar consultation was anchored in RFLD’s BRAVE programme, which holds bodily autonomy, the Maputo Protocol, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and the protection of women human rights defenders as inseparable struggles within a long afrofeminist tradition.

Spaces such as this consultation produce impact that exceeds the day they are held. They restore the dignity of being heard to defenders whose work is too often silenced. They give visibility to the operational realities that shape protection in the region. They create relationships that translate into mutual aid in moments of acute threat. They place institutional actors and grassroots defenders in the same room, and the resulting accountability persists long after the room has emptied.

They strengthen the continental conversation by anchoring it in country level testimony, and they strengthen country level work by connecting it to continental support. Most consequentially, they signal to defenders themselves that they are not alone, that the architecture surrounding their work is alive and engaged, and that the lineage of resistance they carry is recognised by those who hold institutional power.

The closing line of the convening, drawn from the long lineage of African women’s resistance, framed the entire afternoon: Celle qui arrive est liée à celles qui sont venues avant. Nous avançons en nous souvenantd’elles. She who arrives is bound to those who came before. We move forward by remembering them.

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