The African Risk Capacity Agency (ARC), a specialized agency of the African Union, and TrustAfrica today announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish a strategic partnership for advancing gender-responsive disaster risk management (DRM), climate action, and social inclusion across Africa.
The collaboration aims to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable communities, particularly women, youth, and smallholder farmers, to climate shocks and natural disasters.
The MoU provides a framework for collaboration to consolidate and detail cooperation in gender and social protection/inclusion, and in gender and disaster risk management and financing. It reflects the shared ambition to ensure that women and marginalized communities are at the centre of climate adaptation and disaster risk financing efforts.
Areas of cooperation and key activities
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The Parties have agreed to the following areas of cooperation, which are of common interest to ARC and TrustAfrica:
- Advocacy, communication and awareness-building in campaign format to amplify ARC’s mandate and promote gender-responsive climate risk financing.
- Civil society mobilization and engagement at national and community levels, including farmers’ organizations, women’s groups, youth networks, and representatives of local communities.
- Community-level advocacy and sensitization of traditional, religious, and local leaders to support implementation of Gender Action Plans.
- Technical collaboration on gender analysis, policy briefs, joint research, and impact studies on climate adaptation and disaster risk financing.
- Capacity building for stakeholders at community, national, and regional levels to mainstream gender in DRM and climate policies.
- Organization of high-level forums and multi-stakeholder convenings to drive policy and practice change.
Alignment with global and continental frameworks
The Parties will align their collaboration with:
- The Lima Work Programme on Gender
- The Belém Gender Action Plan adopted at COP30
- The domestication of gender commitments within Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)
ARC is currently implementing the second phase of its Gender Strategy, with a strategic shift toward Women Leadership in DRM & Climate Change, enhanced partnership building and networking , the elaboration of Gender and DRM Policies in Member states , enhancing collaboration with stakeholders (including Private Sector) in Member states and enhanced advocacy and sensitisation campaigns for a gender transformative DRM & CC environment, community-level engagement, and strengthened collaboration with civil society organizations.
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Next steps
The MoU will guide joint advocacy, research, capacity building, and convenings over the coming months. Both organizations will share updates on collaborative activities and outcomes as they are finalized.
About TrustAfrica
TrustAfrica is a Pan-African foundation founded to strengthen African agency in addressing the continent’s most pressing challenges. It champions inclusive and equitable economic development, with initiatives promoting smallholder agriculture—particularly women small scale farmers—as well as transparency, accountability and equity in natural resource governance and domestic resource mobilization.
About ARC
The African Risk Capacity Agency (ARC) is a specialized agency of the African Union established to help member countries improve their capacities to better plan, prepare for and respond to extreme weather events and natural disasters, thereby protecting the food security of their vulnerable populations. ARC upholds gender equality principles in all its activities and systematically builds a gender perspective into its operations and policies