The International Fund for Africa (IFA) operates on the principle of Ahimsa (nonviolence and respect for all life) and its founder’s deep and abiding belief in biocentricity and the interconnectedness of all life. IFA promotes non hierarchical and non-exploitative relationships between human beings and all other life forms.

The International Fund for Africa was created in the belief that biodiversity is essential for human life and maintaining and expanding biodiversity are crucial for sustaining human cultural diversity, cultural wealth being intimately interwoven with environments rich in life forms.

We believe our human health, our treatment of each other and nonhuman animals, our relationships to Earth’s ecosystems and biosphere, our protection, management, and distribution of Earth’s wealth, and human relationships in a global community and economy are all directly connected to our fundamental attitudes about ourselves and how we fit in the natural world.

In other words, the direction we humans take moving forward will depend on how we envision our place in the universe – whether we see our species (or some privileged part of it) as specially gifted and central to creation or adopt a more open – minded Approach to what is other than ourselves.