You're pledging to donate if the project hits its minimum goal and gets approved. If not, your funds will be returned.
CAIRN, the Centre for African AI Risk and Governance, is a founder-led initiative working to build Africa's first institution with a primary mandate focused on frontier AI risk reduction, governance capacity, and public-interest safety oversight. Founded by Dr. Alex Hakuzimana, PhD, a senior African policy leader with over 20 years of experience advising governments and multilateral institutions across 12 African countries, CAIRN aims to fill a critical and neglected gap in the global AI governance architecture.
Africa, home to 1.4 billion people and commanding 54 votes in the United Nations General Assembly, is rapidly adopting AI across public health, finance, and public administration. Yet no African institution today holds a primary mandate to address frontier AI safety, alignment risk, or safety-oriented governance capacity. The African Union's Continental AI Strategy Phase I (2025-2026) is actively establishing national AI advisory boards and governance frameworks: this is the narrowest and most consequential window to embed safety-oriented institutional capacity into those structures before norms calcify.
This Manifund application requests founder runway support to protect the time and basic operational capacity of the founding executive during the critical 6-month institution-building sprint from July to December 2026, during which CAIRN will move from concept to a publicly visible, fundable, and operational initiative.
CAIRN has three interdependent goals during this 6-month runway period:
Goal 1: Establish CAIRN as a credible, publicly visible founder-led initiative in the African AI governance and safety space.
Publish the Corda Project 19 framework on Democratic Coordination Under Technological Acceleration on the EA Forum (July 2026) — providing intellectual credibility and signaling rigor to the EA and AI safety communities.
Publish a founding institutional essay and CAIRN concept note for public circulation.
Build a 30-person priority outreach list and complete at least 20 structured conversations with funders, researchers, African policy leaders, and prospective advisors.
Present CAIRN at EA Global New York (October 16-18, 2026) to test the organizational thesis, identify seed funders, and recruit advisors.
Goal 2: Design and initiate the flagship project — AI Governance and Safety Readiness for African Public Systems.
Define the full scope, methodology, and country selection (Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Rwanda, Ghana, The Gambia) for the landscape assessment.
Develop a structured interview protocol and document review framework for assessing AI governance readiness in low-resource public-sector contexts.
Begin scoping fieldwork and desk research, producing an interim scoping memo by December 2026.
Convene at least one invitation-only stakeholder roundtable with ministry officials, civil society, and technical experts.
Goal 3: Lay the institutional foundations for CAIRN's transition to a registered not-for-profit organization.
Identify and engage 3-5 founding advisors covering African policy credibility, AI governance expertise, and nonprofit governance.
Select and progress a legal registration pathway (Rwanda, South Africa, Kenya, or US/UK fiscal sponsorship).
Prepare and submit at least two grant applications for pilot project funding ($100k-$250k) by December 2026.
Develop a full organizational strategy and year-2 workplan for presentation to prospective funders and board members.
These goals are achievable within 6 months because the intellectual groundwork, technical training, and policy network are already substantially in place. The founder runway grant removes the primary constraint: the need to divide time between income-generating consulting and mission-critical institution-building work.
How will this funding be used?
This grant will be used exclusively to cover the founding executive's personal runway costs during the 6-month institution-building sprint from July to December 2026. The budget is designed to be lean, transparent, and directly tied to the mission work described above. No funds will be used for organizational overhead, staff salaries, or equipment.
In total, we request USD $27,800
Living expenses of $4,000 per month reflect the cost of maintaining a stable working base across Kigali (Rwanda), Cape Town (South Africa), and Banjul (The Gambia), covering rent, utilities, food, local transport, and other personal necessities during a period of full-time mission work with no other income source.
The internet subscription ($100/month) covers reliable, high-speed internet connectivity, an essential operational requirement for conducting interviews, attending virtual convenings, writing and publishing, and maintaining the international stakeholder relationships central to this work.
Perplexity Max ($200/month) is the primary AI-assisted research and writing tool used in the production of policy analysis, literature review, concept notes, and grant writing. It directly supports the quality and output velocity of CAIRN's intellectual work during this period.
EA Global New York ($2,000 one-time) covers economy flights from Africa to New York, four nights of accommodation, and conference registration for EA Global New York (October 16-18, 2026), at which Dr. Hakuzimana holds a confirmed invitation. This event is the single most important networking and fundraising opportunity in the AI safety and EA philanthropic calendar, and attendance is expected to yield multiple funder introductions and advisor conversations that will determine whether CAIRN secures its next grant.
Dr. Alex Hakuzimana, PhD — Founding Executive Director
Dr. Hakuzimana is a senior African policy leader, systems thinker, and institutional designer with over 20 years of experience working at the intersection of policy, evidence, and governance across 12 African countries. He currently serves as Health Economist and Senior Health Financing Advisor to the Ministry of Health of The Gambia, and holds an active Corda Fellowship (Project 19) focused on Democratic Coordination Under Technological Acceleration.
Credential / Experience details include:
Education: PhD, Health Economics, University of Cape Town (2025); MPH, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp (2014); MBA, Swiss Management Center University (2013); MD, National University of Rwanda (2005)
African government advisory: Senior advisor to ministers of health, finance, and planning across Rwanda, Nigeria, Lesotho, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia; negotiated with World Bank, Global Fund, and USAID
Program architecture at scale: Designed and led multi-country health financing reform programs shifting over $300M toward primary health care and reaching 50+ million people; managed a $25M USAID-funded capacity-building project.
AI governance training:
Oxford Said & UNESCO (AI in Government, 2025);
Wits University & Global Center on AI Governance (2026);
AI Singapore — AI Ethics & Governance (2026);
BlueDot Impact — Future of AI (2025);
Privacy Hub Africa — Data Protection (2026);
CEA Operations Career Bootcamp (2026)
Current research & fellowship:
Corda Fellow, Project 19: Democratic Coordination Under Technological Acceleration (April 2026 – present);
Independent research: AI Governance and Safety Readiness for African Public Systems (in development)
Track Record on Similar Projects
While CAIRN is a new institution, Dr. Hakuzimana has a documented track record of building programs from concept to execution in analogous high-complexity, multi-stakeholder, resource-constrained environments:
Institutional design: Co-developed Rwanda's National Human Resources for Health Strategic Plan and led national implementation of Performance-Based Financing, building governance systems from scratch within government contexts.
Program management under uncertainty: Directed the Clinton Health Access Initiative's health system strengthening portfolio in post-earthquake Haiti, managing multi-stakeholder coordination under extreme uncertainty.
Policy advisory at ministerial level: Served as Senior Health Financing Advisor to six African governments, drafting policy frameworks and navigating complex multilateral negotiations.
Thought leadership: Regular contributor to AI governance discourse through Substack, LinkedIn, and forthcoming EA Forum publications; advisory contributions to ITU/WHO groups on AI for health.
Convenings and stakeholder engagement: Extensive experience organizing and facilitating high-stakes policy convenings across African ministries, NGOs, and international partner organizations.
The CAIRN project is also not starting from zero. The intellectual groundwork is substantially complete: the Corda fellowship is active, the flagship research concept is designed, the training portfolio is nearly finished, and the EA Global invitation is confirmed. The founder runway grant accelerates execution rather than enabling a speculative start.
Most Likely Causes of Failure
Failure to secure follow-on funding: the 6-month runway produces strong outputs but CAIRN is unable to convert that momentum into a pilot project grant ($100k-$250k). This would result in the initiative stalling at the concept stage, with no institutional continuity.
Founder time fragmentation: If not secured, Dr. Hakuzimana will need to divide his time between income-generating consulting work and CAIRN. This is the primary risk this grant is designed to mitigate. Divided attention would likely delay all deliverables by 6-12 months and substantially reduce output quality.
Insufficient advisory and partner traction: To generate interest, referrals, or collaboration commitments, CAIRN may struggle to build the field legitimacy needed to access government and funder networks.
Scope overextension: attempts to cover too many countries or thematic areas simultaneously, it may produce weak outputs that fail to demonstrate the technical credibility CAIRN needs to differentiate itself.
Most Likely Outcomes If This Project Fails
The 6-month window of the AU Continental AI Strategy Phase I closes with no safety-oriented African institution positioned to shape it — a counterfactual that is difficult to reverse.
Alex's transition into the AI governance field continues but along a slower, employment-first pathway, deferring institution-building by 2-3 years.
The intellectual work produced during the Corda Fellowship and independent research remains unpublished or under-disseminated, reducing its policy impact.
Africa's absence from serious frontier AI governance continues, with the region likely defaulting to governance frameworks designed primarily for economic regulation rather than safety.
None of these outcomes are catastrophic in an absolute sense, but they represent a meaningful loss of leverage at a historically important moment. The expected value of this grant is therefore substantially higher than its dollar value, because it is timed to coincide with the highest-leverage period in African AI governance formation.
How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?
CAIRN has not yet raised external institutional funding. The initiative is at its pre-funding stage, which is precisely the gap this Manifund grant is designed to address.
In the last 12 months, the work that has led to the creation of CAIRN, including completion of academic training programs, the Corda Fellowship, and the development of this organizational concept, has been supported entirely through personal savings drawn from family resources. This represents a meaningful personal financial commitment to the mission and reflects a high level of founder conviction in the project.
To date, Dr. Hakuzimana has self-funded his AI governance training portfolio (Oxford Said Business School, Wits University, AI Singapore, BlueDot Impact, Privacy Hub Africa, and the CEA Career Bootcamp), travel and networking expenses, and the time cost of the Corda Fellowship, all without external grant support.
This Manifund application represents the first formal external funding request for CAIRN. A successful grant would be used as a proof-of-concept signal in subsequent applications to larger funders including BlueDot Impact Rapid Grants, the EVAH Initiative, Open Philanthropy, Longview Philanthropy, and Horizon Europe/EDCTP3.