SaferAfrica
From TrustAfrica wiki - African Regional Organizations
SaferAfrica
173 Beckett Street, Arcadia, Pretoria, South Africa
Tel: +27 12 481 6200
Fax: +27 343 6807
Email: saferafrica@saferafrica.org
Website: http://www.saferafrica.org
Mr. Jakkie Potgeiter, Director, Head of Safety and Security Program
Ms. Slu Hlongwa, Director, Head of Governance and Development Program
Mr. Rick de Caris, Director, Head of Administrative Program
Ms. Virginia Gamba, Head of International Peace and Cooperation Programme
Description
SaferAfrica is an international NGO headquartered in South Africa since 2001. The organization operates in Africa and Latin America. Operations that are across different regions and/or bicontinental are entitled SurPaz activities. SaferAfrica believes that equal importance should be given to: the generation of sustainable policy; the provision of capacity to implementing agencies in order to facilitate and ensure delivery on the ground, and the enhancement of the participatory capacity of civil society to accompany transformation and consolidate peace.
SaferAfrica’s delivery on these three objectives can be exemplified in the delivery of its three programs: the International Peace and Cooperation program with its dedicated agenda on all aspects of international and African peace and cooperation issues; the Safety and Security program in relation to regional and national coordinated plans of action for arms management, disarmament and sustainable development and the AU common Position on Small Arms; and the Governance and Development program in training of Plataforma Nacional da Sociedade Civil Angolana para as Elieções (PNASCAE), improving capacity for social responsibility and delivery of cooperatives and mutuals in two continents.
The International Peace and Cooperation Program focuses its work in providing technical assistance to regional and continental bodies in Africa that are tasked with developing and rolling out the new Africa Union tools for engagement in conflict prevention, resolution and management. The guidelines for the work of the unit are within the eight African Peace and Security Agenda priorities (APSA) identified by the NEPAD vision in conjunction with the Africa Union Commission. The areas of post conflict reconstruction and development, security sector reform and protection of Africa’s natural resources, and improving action coordination in Africa as well as oversight processes such as the continental APRM process have been the focus of the work. Due to the characteristics of this work, the program assists in the facilitation of dialogue, provides expertise support for the development of policies in successive drafts of policy.
SaferAfrica also provides technical assistance and support to continental, regional and national organizations and governments in the South that will assist in the implementation and delivery of key policies in the field of peace, security, safety and good governance.
SaferAfrica’s main funders are the EU Commission, German Embassy in Pretoria, governments of Ireland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, DFlD, and UK High Commission in Pretoria.
Track Record
SaferAfrica has successfully conducted applied research and provided technical assistance at the national level in Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Mauritius, Mozambique, Lesotho, Tanzania, Angola, Rwanda, Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, and Sudan, as well as in Nicaragua, Colombia, Argentina, and Cambodia. At the regional level, it has worked closely with the Regional Center on Small Arms (RECSA) of the Great Lakes Region and the Horn, as well as the Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Committee and the ECOWAS Secretariat in Nigeria.
Continentally several programs of SaferAfrica provided technical support and assistance to the AU Commission in Addis Ababa. The International Peace and Cooperation program has engaged on the AU’s new Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development ((PCRD) framework, while the Safety and Security program helped the AU generate a SALW common position and operationalize the Terrorism Convention. SaferAfrica also supported the NEPAD secretariat and continued to support the Interpol sub-regional bureaus in Africa.
Internationally, SaferAfrica assisted several initiatives, notably the arms transfer conference in Tanzania as a Finland-Tanzanian initiative, the Stockholm Initiative for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reconstruction, and the emerging European Union policy on SALW. In 2005 and 2006, SaferAfrica spent considerable time in support of Africa in its participation of the UN Program of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects (UNPoA). SaferAfrica also partnered with several UN agencies—including the UNDDA, UNIDIR, UNOPS, UNDP, and UNU among others.
SaferAfrica has also provided program support to the Tanzania National Action Plan since 2001. In 2005 the EU Commission—which funds the program—undertook an external evaluation of all the African projects and issued an evaluation which indicates that the objectives of the SaferAfrica-run program have been achieved successfully. Safer Africa also continues to work on Operations Rachel, involving collaboration on arms destruction between the South African Police Service and the government of Mozambique. The results of the two operations in 2005 yielded significant dividends to peace and security in the Southern Africa region.
Challenges
SaferAfrica considers delays experienced between the approval of the funding grants and the disbursements of the actual funds—often in excess of 6-9 months—to be a major challenge. With activities expected to commence in the interim, such delays mean SaferAfrica must cross-subsidize projects with existing funds, and report retroactively to donors when the approved funds become available. Due to the nature of its work in training, capacity building and technical assistance, needs are often very immediate and time specific. Linked to this is the perception that donors suffer from poor institutional memory and do not always see the linkage between previous support and immediate support for high-priority interventions.
A related challenge is meeting the proliferation of reporting formats and requirements requested by different donors. While some donors require logframes and others require hard copies of outputs, and others are satisfied with PDFs of publications, some want copies of letters of appreciation received by SaferAfrica. In view of these different demands, SaferAfrica is obliged to tailor each report to the specificities of individual donors. In addition, administering smaller grants often involves have more reporting requirements than for larger grants.
The pool of donors supporting SaferAfrica continues to expand at institutional, programmatic and project level. Donor funding supports a broad range of activities from destruction of illicit arms, micro-development for poverty reduction, facilitation of policy and of consensus, planning and enhancement of operational support, capacity building, training and the provision of expert technical support to governmental and non-governmental bodies. While some offer funding across projects and programs, and others prefer program funding or institutional support.
Opportunities
SaferAfrica is looking for flexible and creative support from private foundations, to deal with the often multilayered requests for assistance it receives. For instance, SaferAfrica is often required create and capacitate specialized police units, a task that requires not only institution-building support, governance procedure development, the development of training curriculum, and the provision and installation of equipment.
