The African Women's Development Fund (AWDF), which supports and promotes women rights in Africa, said on Friday that it has disbursed grants totalling 344,000 dollars to women organisations on the continent.

The grants were awarded to 38 women's organisations from 19 countries, working at local, national and regional levels. Ten of the organisations were from Ghana.

Mrs Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, Executive Director of AWDF, was speaking at a press briefing on AWDF'ss first Africa launch in Accra on December 8, to start a three- year international campaign aimed at raising 10 million US dollars.

"The AWDF thrives on fund raising to support the work of other organisations working to promote women's rights in Africa", she said.

"Resource mobilisation within Africa is a priority for AWDF although, so far, fund mobilisation has been received from international institutional donors, private foundations and individual donors outside Africa."

Mrs Adeleye-Fayemi said grants and multi-year commitments have come from some Foundations and NGOs in America, Canada, United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

"We are, however, encouraging every working woman in Africa to donate at least a dollar each for us to put in the fund to make it available for our less fortunate ones who would need to be educated and empowered on a lot of issues", she said

"We support programmes which develop and promote women's leadership and advocacy across five thematic areas," Mrs Adeleye-Fayemi said adding that these areas are women's human rights, political participation, peace building, health reproductive rights and HIV/AIDS and Economic empowerment.

Ms Joana Foster, Co-founder of the Fund said it was started because a lot of women find it difficult to get access to finance in Africa. Ghana was chosen as the headquarters for the fund because of its political and economic stability.

She urged African women to "put their monies where their heart is" to work towards a world where there is social justice for all, especially the African woman.