Afrodeities Foundation — Charitable Incorporated Organisation
African Cultural Restoration.
Diaspora Infrastructure.
Memory Made Permanent.
The Afrodeities Foundation is a UK Charitable Incorporated Organisation working to restore, preserve, and transmit African and Afro-descended cultural knowledge across the global diaspora. We fund writer development, build publishing infrastructure, deliver myth-based education programmes, and establish creative residency networks across six diaspora regions.
Our Purpose
The Foundation does not add to culture. It restores what was taken from it.
Across the African diaspora, communities hold memories of cosmological systems, mythological knowledge, and civic structures that were suppressed, fragmented, or made inaccessible through centuries of colonial intervention. The Afrodeities Foundation is built on the premise that this knowledge is not lost. It has been buried. And restoration is not symbolic. It is structural.
We operate as the charitable arm of the wider Afrodeities ecosystem, which includes the Afrodeities Institute CIC and Afrodeities Press. The Foundation funds writer discovery and development, builds physical and digital publishing infrastructure, delivers African mythology and cultural heritage education in schools and communities, and establishes creative residency networks across six strategically identified diaspora regions.
Our work is not reactive. We do not respond to cultural crises event by event. We build the institutional architecture that means African-descended communities no longer have to rely on goodwill for access to their own history, mythology, and civic knowledge.
Priority Work
Five Domains of Cultural Restoration
Writer Development
We discover, mentor, and platform African and Afro-descended writers from underrepresented regions. Annual diaspora-wide discovery programmes, microgrants, residency placements, and chapbook publication routes connect emerging writers to the international literary infrastructure.
Myth-Based Education
The Foundation delivers African cultural heritage education through myth-based curriculum modules in schools, community settings, and digital platforms. Our programmes treat African cosmology, mathematics, writing systems, and civic philosophy as foundational educational content, not supplementary material.
Publishing Access
We build multilingual, low-cost publishing infrastructure to bring African mythological and cultural texts into circulation in regions where they remain inaccessible. This includes digital editions, print-on-demand routes, and e-reader distribution programmes across West Africa, South America, and the Caribbean.
Creative Residencies
Our residency programme connects African and Afro-descended writers and artists to physical and remote spaces for sustained creative and research work. Residencies are structured around the codex canon, the diaspora archive, and the regional recovery programmes delivered through the Compass Points network.
Archive and Digital Infrastructure
We build open-access digital archives of African mythology, oral tradition, and material culture. The Black Atlas participatory mapping project and the Afrodeities Digital Visual Codex are the flagship infrastructure outputs, designed for use by schools, researchers, cultural institutions, and diaspora communities worldwide.
Flagship Programme
The Compass Points Programme
The Compass Points Programme is the Foundation’s central multi-region delivery framework: a structured network of six diaspora nodes, each with its own cultural and institutional logic, connected by a shared body of mythological and literary infrastructure.
UK
The Bridge
Headquarters of the Afrodeities Institute CIC. MythLabs London delivers curriculum, events, and training. The UK node articulates the vision to funders, institutions, and educational authorities, and converts diaspora cultural knowledge into scalable public-benefit programming.
Brazil
The Living Echo
Brazil holds the strongest African spiritual inheritance outside the continent. The Foundation partners with Afro-Brazilian institutions in Salvador, Recife, and São Paulo to deliver myth-based residencies, codex translation into Portuguese, and cross-continental storytelling partnerships.
Nigeria
The Root
MythLabs Nigeria builds production and distribution infrastructure: low-cost printing, e-reader programmes, and writing fellowships for West African authors. Nigeria serves as the mythological and cosmological origin point for Yoruba, Igbo, and Efik traditions central to the Afrodeities canon.
Haiti
The Mythic Republic
Haiti holds unique mythological authority as the first African-founded republic. The Foundation delivers remote publishing support, annual grants for Haitian writers, and cross-country mentorship connecting Haitian voices to Nigerian, Brazilian, and Caribbean counterparts through myth-based writing cohorts.
Uruguay
The Silenced Pole
Afro-Uruguayan cultural memory faces a quiet erasure. The Foundation establishes the Uruguay Griot Circle — a mentored network of local writers and memory-keepers — to restore and publish Afro-Uruguayan stories and connect them to the wider Black Atlantic literary and mythological tradition.
United States
The Mythic Mirror
The US holds immense African-American cultural power, but the connection to African mythological roots is frequently severed. The Foundation builds HBCU partnerships, North American distribution channels, and US-based writer fellowships rooted in the codex canon and diaspora restoration framework.
MythLabs Infrastructure
MythLabs: Civic Infrastructure for African Memory
MythLabs are the Foundation’s physical and digital creative infrastructure nodes. Each MythLab is a dedicated space for African myth research, writer formation, curriculum development, archival work, and community engagement. They are designed to be permanent, not project-based, and to function as civic institutions within their regional contexts.
MythLabs London
UK headquarters for the Afrodeities Institute. Delivers myth curriculum, public engagement events, writer training, and the administrative and institutional functions of the Compass Points network.
MythLabs Uruguay
Research, archive, and retreat centre in South America. Hosts the Griot Circle, supports Afro-Uruguayan writer development, and serves as a hub for Caribbean, Brazilian, and Haitian programme delivery and partnership.
MythLabs Nigeria
Production and distribution infrastructure for West Africa. Delivers education, e-reader and low-cost publishing programmes, and writing fellowships. Serves as the root node for mythological source knowledge and regional cultural networking.
For Funders and Partners
What the Foundation Offers Partners
The Afrodeities Foundation is structured for partnership with funders, institutions, and cultural organisations working in African heritage, diaspora cultural equity, decolonial education, environmental humanities, and international cultural exchange. Our programmes are multi-year, geographically distributed, and built around measurable cultural outputs.
Cultural Heritage Funders
African oral tradition preservation, myth-based archival programmes, and diaspora cultural heritage projects with multi-regional reach and institutional longevity.
Education and Curriculum Funders
Decolonial curriculum development, African heritage in schools, myth-based pedagogical innovation, and cultural literacy programmes for young people in the UK and internationally.
Global Cultural Equity Funders
Diaspora publishing access, narrative sovereignty programmes, African writer development in underserved regions, and literary infrastructure for communities where publishing pipelines are absent or inaccessible.
Environmental and Ecological Funders
The Soil Codex, Seed Vault infrastructure, and mytho-botanical education programmes sit at the intersection of African ecological knowledge, food heritage, and environmental humanities.
Current Funders and Supporters
Organisations Supporting Our Work
The Afrodeities Foundation works in partnership with funders and institutions aligned with African diaspora cultural restoration, heritage preservation, community education, and international cultural exchange. We welcome enquiries from programme officers, institutional partners, and individual supporters.
Our work is aligned with the programme priorities of funders including the National Lottery Community Fund, Arts Council England, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Prince Claus Fund, and Arcadia Fund. For funding enquiries or partnership conversations, contact us at foundation@afrodeities.org.
Support the Work
The Afrodeities Foundation is currently accepting enquiries from funders, institutional partners, and programme collaborators. For full programme documentation, grant application support, or a conversation about alignment with your funding priorities, contact us directly.