TAYF’s story begins in 2020, when founder Willice Onyango set out to map youth-led organisations across East Africa. What he found was not a shortage of ideas or ambition, but a funding ecosystem fundamentally misaligned with how grassroots change actually happens. Innovative, youth-led organisations were driving real transformation in their communities, largely without the resources to sustain it. 

That documentation effort became a call to action. In 2021, Willice convened youth leaders across the region to co-design a new model, one that would place young people at the centre of both the work and the systems that fund it. By 2022, The African Youth Foundation was formally established as a platform designed to reconfigure how capital flows to youth-led change across the continent.

In 2023, TAYF launched its Flexible Funding Framework alongside its first cohort of 12 organisations across 5 countries. Unlike traditional funding models, this framework was built around how grassroots organisations actually operate, adapt, trust, and are oriented toward long-term sustainability. What began as a mapping exercise had grown into a movement.

That momentum has only accelerated. By 2025, TAYF has deployed over $1 million in catalytic capital, supporting 38 organisations across 12 countries. The portfolio continues to grow not just in scale but also in depth of impact.