A Breakthrough for Trans-led Networks in Africa

Sometimes a procedural detail reshapes what an organisation can achieve. In 2025, the African Trans Network (ATN) obtained legal registration in South Africa as an independent entity, marking an important milestone in the network’s growth and development. Founded in 2020 as a regional network spanning East, West, and Southern Africa, ATN coordinates regional and national trans networks to advance the rights, safety, health, and wellbeing of trans people across the continent. Prior to registration, ATN’s legal status made it more challenging to raise funding in its own name and to directly manage and allocate resources.

This registration will strengthen the network’s ability to engage with funders and partners, build institutional systems, and expand support to trans-led movements across Africa while continuing its core role in movement building, coordination, and advocacy. Operating through fiscal-hosting arrangements has continued providing ATN with access to resources and operational support during its formative years. At the same time, this registration represents an important step toward greater organisational autonomy, visibility, and long-term sustainability.

Building on this progress, ATN continued implementing its Innovation Small Grants Programme, financed by the Robert Carr Fund, to strengthen advocacy and improve access to HIV-related services for trans communities. Through the programme, ATN has supported trans-led initiatives across the continent, including projects focused on healthcare access, community outreach, peer support, advocacy, research, and emergency response.

The African Trans Network Steering Committee and secretariat pose for a group photograph during a week-long in-person meeting between the Steering Committee and Secretariat, Nairobi, Kenya. Photograph: African Trans Network

For organisations operating in contexts where trans movements are emerging and often under-resourced, direct trans-led funding carries particular significance. Beyond financial support, it represents recognition of trans organisations as credible actors capable of identifying and responding to the needs of their communities.

ATN’s progress rests on its own work and on sustained partnerships. It sits within the Trans Asia Pacific and Africa Solidarity (TAPAS) consortium led by the Asia Pacific Transgender Network (APTN), which received funding from RCF in the 2022 to 2024 cycle and now mentors ATN as it builds sub-granting, financial and administrative capacity. APTN shares lessons from building its own regional network without prescribing, exemplifying RCF’s model of growing emerging networks within the same funding ecosystem.

As ATN continues to grow, its mission remains unchanged: strengthening trans-led organising, advancing trans rights, and building a more connected and resilient trans movement across Africa. Legal registration has not altered that mission; it has enhanced the network’s ability to pursue it.

For the first time, ATN was able to independently raise, manage and disburse funds to other trans-led movements in Africa. It marked ATN’s transition “from coordination into actively resourcing the movement it was built to serve”, according to Akani Shimange, former Regional Coordinator of ATN

Receiving earmarked funding for trans-specific activities is opening new possibilities for these organisations, which, like ATN, work in difficult political, legal and social conditions to advance trans rights, protect trans communities, and improve their access to health services.