The Small Grants Programme across Africa
Applications received and grants awarded by country, 2009–2025 (32 funding rounds). Choose a measure, then hover or tap a country.
Across much of Africa, people living with cancer, HIV and other life-limiting illnesses still reach the end of life in pain that could have been eased — around 45% of African countries have little or no palliative care provision at all. The map below tells a more hopeful story: hundreds of grants reaching small hospices, hospitals and community groups in dozens of countries, each one bringing comfort and dignity to patients in their own homes. Every one of them was made possible by the generosity of the True Colours Trust.
The True Colours Trust
The True Colours Trust has stood beside the African Palliative Care Association as a steadfast partner for over 20 years.
The True Colours Trust is an independent funder established in 2002 and working in the UK and Africa towards a time when everyone, wherever they live and whatever their age, is able to access good palliative care, and disabled children and young people are able to live their lives to the full. They do this by listening to those with lived experience to identify need and develop solutions. In Africa, their work is focused on improving access to pain relief and palliative care.
The True Colours Trust's flagship Africa Small Grants Programme, which APCA is proud to administer on its behalf, supports the development of palliative care on the continent through modest, mostly one-off awards considered twice each year. The programme has contributed significantly to develop and improve access to good palliative care in more than 30 African countries over the last 20 years.
The funding has direct impact on patients, as it goes straight towards what they feel most directly: equipment and medicines, reaching people in rural areas far from any hospital, training for local providers, palliative care for children and young people, and capital improvements. Year after year, True Colours has chosen to back exactly the kind of small, grassroots organisations that larger funders so often overlook.
For that steady generosity, and for the trust it places in local providers, we are deeply grateful.
Visit the Africa Small Grants programme →