ActionAid Nigeria (AAN), with funding from Global Affairs Canada (GAC), through the Renewed Women’s Voice and Leadership (RWVL) Project, is pleased to announce a Call for Expression of Interest for Strategic Innovation Funding (SIF) to support creative and innovative interventions aimed at advancing the rights of women and girls in Nigeria.
Issuing Organization: ActionAid Nigeria
Donor: Global Affairs Canada
Project: Renewed Women’s Voice and Leadership Project
Country: Nigeria
The Opportunity
The Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) is a grant designed to support innovative ideas and initiatives addressing gender issues with a focus on diverse women and girls. This fund provides women’s rights organizations (WROs) with the opportunity to design and test creative approaches that promote and protect women and girls’ rights. Through this fund, WROs can pilot new ideas, models, and technologies that challenge existing barriers, strengthen advocacy, and generate scalable solutions for achieving transformative changes in women and girls’ lives. Ideas that address violence against women and girls, protect women and girls in conflict or on the move, women economic justice and empowerment, women political participation and leadership including policy advocacy and influencing.
Scope of the Call
This call is open to all women’s rights organizations in Nigeria.
Eligibility and Selection Criteria
To be eligible for this grant, you must:
- Be a women’s rights organization or women’s rights network.
- Be women-led and operating in Nigeria.
- Propose an intervention that is innovative, creative, strategic, and impactful for women and girls.
- Demonstrate how this intervention will advance gender equality, gender justice, contribute to systemic change and complement existing efforts in advancing the rights of women and girls.
- Show how scalable the intervention can be.
- Demonstrate the capacity to implement within a short timeframe and achieve measurable impact.
Please note: We really want to hear from applicants who have innovative ideas on programming for structurally excluded groups such as women and girls with disability, women and girls in conflict, women and girls on the move/returnees, female inmates, gender-based violence victims/survivors, out-of-school girls, elderly women and women in politics.
Submission Requirements
All interested applicants should use the attached template to respond to the call. The completed template should be sent alongside an organizational profile.
Please Note:
- Only one application per organization will be considered.
- Applications that are not on the required template will be disqualified.
- Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted due to the volume of applications received.
- AAN will not be responsible for any cost you may incur in the application process.
Award Ceiling
Up to Five (5) innovative ideas will be granted in this round with a grant ceiling of Twenty Million Naira (NGN20,000,000.00) each, to be implemented within Six (6) months to One (1) year period.
Submission Guidelines
Timeline
- Call Opens:22nd January 2026.
- Deadline for Submission: 13th February 2026. (12:00 Midnight)
How to Apply
- Submit your completed EOI and required documents via email to:
SIFGrant@actionaid.org - Use the subject line: “Strategic Innovation Fund January 2026”
Download the Application Template and Budget Below
SIF Application Template (37 downloads)
SIF Grant Budget (24 downloads)
