Khanya was formed in 1998 as Khanya-managing rural change (Khanya-mrc) by a group of people who had carried out pioneering work on change management in the rural sector in the Free State province in South Africa.

With a passion for a transformation process in Africa that addresses poverty in a significant way, we went on to formalize the organization when we realized that our work was making an impact. In order to increase our impact, we had to grow and this culminated in Khanya becoming the African Institute for Community-Driven Development in February 2006. We refer to it as Khanya-aicdd. This passion has not left Khanya, and we have an enthusiastic, committed team that works with others in meaningful partnerships for change.

Our work has since evolved and developed being energised by the ‘Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA)’, which gave us a real focus. Out of our work on institutional issues in implementing the SLA we developed six governance issues. These issues are key to making the SLA practical in addressing poverty:

Empowering communities - micro (community) level

• People active and involved in managing their own development (claiming their rights and exercising their responsibilities);
• A responsive, active and accessible network of local service providers (community-based, private sector or government);

Empowering local government and district services - meso level

• At local government level (lower meso), services facilitated, provided or promoted effectively and responsively, co-ordinated and held accountable;
• At upper meso level, the region supportive and supervising the level below;

Realigning the centre - macro (national) level

• The centre providing strategic direction, redistribution and oversight, and how responsive is this to micro and meso-level realities and inputs?
• International institutions and processes helping to promote the capacity of nation states to take on strategic roles to eradicate poverty.

Our main focus countries are South Africa, Lesotho, Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe, although we have worked in 15 African countries and have offices in South Africa and Lesotho. We increasingly seek to work across the colonial divides which have created great barriers to sharing of experience in Africa.