The NEPAD/Spanish Fund for African Women’s Empowerment is a partnership between the NEPAD Agency and the Spanish Government through the Spanish Agency for International Development and Cooperation (AECID). It has benefited from a 20 million Euros contribution from the Government of Spain.

The overall long-term goal of the NEPAD Spanish Fund is to promote gender equality and increase the capacities and autonomy of African women, in order to contribute to the acceleration of the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, in particular MDG3.

The specific objective of the NEPAD Spanish Fund is to support actions on gender equality and women’s empowerment, specifically linked to improving women’s economic, political and social empowerment and full use of their rights, within the framework of the MDG 3 in sub-Saharan African countries.

The Fund provides financial and technical support to women’s grassroots organizations, civil society organizations government institutions and Regional Economic Communities.

77 projects have been supported since its inception in 2007 in 35 countries in Sub-Sahara Africa.

The Fund is also supporting the NEPAD Gender programme, which aims to mainstream gender issues into NEPAD programmes, projects and processes.

The work of the NEPAD/Spanish Fund is aligned to the priorities and the African Union Gender Policy, the Africa Women Decade (2010-2020) as well as with other international and regional policies and frameworks to ensure sustainability of the programme and projects and the achievement of Agenda 2063.