Objective

1. Description of the Real Economy Campaign 

The Real Economy is a pan-African cultural campaign to redefine and recognise care as the work that makes all other work possible. It celebrates the nurse, the teacher, the helper, the care-giver, the nanny - the invisible infrastructure that holds our world together. By elevating care work, safety, and women’s financial inclusion, we are reimagining what counts and who matters.

 Because if no one cares, nothing works.

2. Our Goal 

To make care visible, valuable and investable.

3. Our Objectives

• Set the standard for what care leadership looks like.
• Mobilize sustainable financing and investment for care services and infrastructure as essential economic drivers.
• Foster partnerships and collective action among government, civil society, the private sector, culture and international partners.
• Shift the narrative of care from a private burden to a public good.

 

 

 

 

 

Strategy

The Real Economy works through three components, designed to function as one system.

The Data That Changes Everything. Care has been miscategorised exclusively as a welfare issue, rather than an economic and political one. We are building the narrative and evidence to reposition it. The Real Economy Index will be the first continental ranking of care economy leadership across African governments, cities and corporations. Alongside it, we are producing public narrative reports on the political economy of care in South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, Nigeria and Rwanda.

The Summit & Awards. An annual platform that recognises, celebrates and accelerates leadership in Africa's care economy — the moment where care, culture and capital meet to shape Africa's care agenda. From heads of state to headliners to housekeepers: half the room comes from the care sector, with teachers, nurses, nannies and domestic workers as honoured guests.

The Faces of the Real Economy. The Faces of the Real Economy. An annual portrait and film series featuring extraordinary women and men reshaping Africa through care, activism and leadership. The 2025 was a “cover model”, where we wanted to give our care workers and care-givers the experience of being on the cover of a magazine and the most important person in the room. This series is a celebration of the people whose unseen work holds our world together: the nanny who crosses the city before sunrise, the domestic worker who leaves her own home to bring order to someone else's, the teacher shaping futures from an overcrowded classroom, the nurse holding a hand through pain.

But there were challenges we had to overcome including bringing men into a conversation about care without obscuring that women carry the overwhelming share of unpaid care. The second was that universal agreement that care matters, and that women carry too much of it, did not lead to action. We shifted the narrative to the economic case, care as the infrastructure the economy runs on,  while keeping the gendered dimensions of the campaign.

Results

In the last nine months we achieved the following:

• The campaign reached 3,926,252 people organically across our digital platforms, with 214,226 engagements, many of which were young men. We were able to reach new audiences with the message that care is capital, deserving of recognition, dignity and investment.
• 42 organisations across government, academia, civil society and the care sector in South Africa and Kenya collaborated on the campaign. We established research partnerships with the University of the Free State and the Human Sciences Research Council to design and deliver the platform's first baseline public narrative report on care as economic and political infrastructure in South Africa, scheduled to launch in November 2026. The African Center for Economic Transformation has come in as continental research partner, leading design and development of The Real Economy Index, the first continental ranking of care economy leadership across African governments, cities and corporations.
• We delivered five narrative and advocacy workshops for hundres of young women aged 19-23 with UN Women, the University of Johannesburg and the HSRC, across five modules: the care economy; storytelling for social change; digital advocacy; media literacy; and visual campaign design.
• The campaign was spotlighted at major global policy moments including the G20 Summit in South Africa, the W20 Summit and UN Women Policy Dialogues on the Care Economy.

Media

Video for The Real Economy