Executive summary
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)'s Africa Zone (Zone) covers 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa1 and is divided into six functional/geographical regions namely West Coast (Abuja), Sahel (Dakar), Central Africa (Yaoundé), Indian Ocean Islands (Mauritius), East Africa (Nairobi), and Southern Africa (Johannesburg). Based on the scale and scope of humanitarian challenges and emergency operations, there are currently eight IFRC country representation offices in Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea/Djibouti, Ethiopia, Niger, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe, directly accountable to the Africa Zone office based in Johannesburg.
The Africa Zone resulted from the merger of the three former zone offices (East, West and Central and Southern Africa) into an overarching continental office that outlines the overall strategic direction of the functional structures. In order to effectively coordinate operations, channel support and services to the membership, being the 48 National Societies (NS), two operational support hubs have been created in within the Sahel and East Africa regional offices with provision for technical programme support upon NS request as well as zone-level roles in key support services (including finance, logistics, information technology/telecommunication and human resources) and humanitarian diplomacy (including Communications, resource mobilisation, and performance and accountability.