Disability News & Opportunities Across Africa. Covering jobs, grants, advocacy, inclusion, health, education, and programs for persons with disabilities across all 54 African nations.
Treaties, legal frameworks, government policies
A landmark disability rights policy workshop hosted by the Gauteng Provincial Government in February 2026 ended with a powerful call: South Africa needs a legally enforceable National Disability Act. Here’s what happened and why it matters.
Introduction Today, 21 March 2026, South Africa marks Human Rights Day — a day to reflect on the rights enshrined in the Constitution and to take honest stock of where those rights remain out of reach. This year, the South African Federation for Mental Health (SAFMH) and Cape Mental Health are shining a powerful spotlight…
Tanzania, with a population of over 60 million people across the mainland and Zanzibar, is East Africa’s most geographically expansive country. Its disability community is represented primarily by the Tanzania Federation of Disabled People’s Organisations, known as SHIVYAWATU, which coordinates advocacy and policy engagement across the country’s diverse regions and its unique mainland-island political structure….
Ethiopia is Africa’s second most populous country, home to over 120 million people. With an estimated disability prevalence of around six percent, that translates to more than seven million Ethiopians living with disabilities — a population larger than the entire population of many African countries. The scale of the inclusion challenge in Ethiopia is enormous….
Uganda occupies a unique position in the African disability rights landscape. Its 1995 Constitution explicitly recognises the rights of persons with disabilities including reserved parliamentary seats for disability representatives making it one of the most formally inclusive constitutional frameworks on the continent. Uganda was also one of the early ratifying states of the African Disability…
Ghana has one of the most established legal frameworks for disability rights in West Africa. The Persons with Disability Act 715, passed in 2006, was one of the first comprehensive national disability laws on the continent. It predates the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Ghana ratified in 2012. In legal…
Housing is not simply shelter. For persons with disabilities, it is the foundation on which everything else employment, education, health, social participation either becomes possible or impossible. An inaccessible home is not just uncomfortable. It is a barrier to the world. South Africa has long acknowledged this in policy language. What has been missing, in…
On 3 May 2024, a landmark moment occurred for disability rights across Africa. The African Disability Protocol formally titled the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Africa – officially entered into force. This happened when the Republic of Congo deposited the 15th instrument…
