Our impact
Shifting Narratives, Creating Opportunity.
Stories shape systems. They influence how the world sees Africa and how Africans see themselves. Since our inception, we’ve invested in storytellers, research, platforms, and partnerships that challenge harmful narratives and champion new ones rooted in possibility, progress, and opportunity.
We’ve grown a powerful ecosystem of creatives, journalists, funders, and changemakers working together to reimagine Africa’s story, on its own terms.
Why We Invested.
Reflecting on Our First Year.
We launched with the belief that the dominant stories about Africa were outdated and limiting. Acting as watchdogs, curators, and funders, we set out to rewrite the narrative by investing in storytellers, community-building, research, and disruption.
With a small team of 9 and a seed investment of USD 1.5 million, we funded 97 grantees and 5 research projects in year one—building an ecosystem of empowered, connected, and visible African creators.
Our Why We Invested report explores that journey—what we learned, how we grew, and why this work matters more than ever.
Impact by numbers
2020–2025.
At Africa No Filter, we know narrative change is hard to measure and it takes time to feel its impact.
We are only five years into this journey but we are already seeing change and shifting of mindsets about Africa.
To measure success we combine hard data with soft evidence, using both quantitative and qualitative indicators to track our influence.
Our research, from the Global Media Index to the Business in Africa Narrative report, has given us a solid baseline from which we can assess change over time – and we are working on that. For now we count the:
The combined social and non-social media reach by the #CorrectTheMap campaign.
The size of our growing community of storytellers and their collective reach.
The number of fellowships, webinars, gatherings and events we have funded and hosted to support and empower this community.
The number of storytellers who’ve attended ANF Academy masterclasses.
The number of grants we awarded to date for content or ecosystem changing initiatives.
The number of people reached, directly and indirectly, by ANF finded projects.
The number of stories put out by bird story agency since inception to its media base of 127 outlets.
The number of people reached per month through those stories - directly and indirectly.
The number of reports we have published to show evidence of the impact of harmful narratives.
The number of downloads / online reads of these reports.
The number of editorials we have had published on our work and our projects - from articles in the The Guardian, Variety Magazine to opinion pieces on CNN and The Africa Report.
The number of speaking engagements, panels and keynotes in which we have shared the importance of narrative change for Africa.
The number of people who have enrolled on our narrative shifting training courses like The Ethical Storytelling Handbook and the African Stories journalism course delivered in partnership with the Reuters Foundation.
The number of people who have used our storytelling tools to help them tell better stories about Africa, including our AI enabled Africa Bias Buster, the How to write about Africa and How to write about an African election guide books.
The number of websites and online platforms that link to ANF’s projects including the UN, World Bank, WEF, Harvard, Oxford, Columbia, MIT,
But we also listen to the voices behind the numbers. To us, impact is when a filmmaker gets to tell the story they want, when a journalist changes their framing, and when institutions rethink the way they speak about Africa.
Impact is both visible and felt. It’s when we walk into rooms we’ve never been in and people know us and our work. It’s in the partnerships and alliances we have forged – African Union, Mastercard Foundation, Meta, Gates Foundation, Africa Centre, Africa Practice, and the platforms we are invited to speak at.
We see impact as both measurable and meaningful. And we’re just getting started.
