In June 2025, I wrote that uncertainty in global development could create an opening for African-led philanthropy. At the time, the argument was hopeful but cautious: if traditional aid became less reliable, African-led funding, pooled giving, trust-centered governance, and locally rooted institutions might become more necessary.
A year later, I would put it more sharply. African-led philanthropy is no longer only an opportunity. It is becoming part of the survival architecture for development in Africa.
What changed: the warning that became the operating environment
In June 2025, the aid contraction still looked like a major warning signal. Now in 2026, it is no longer a warning. It is the operating environment.
OECD preliminary data says ODA fell by 23.1% in 20251, the largest annual contraction recorded, after already falling in 2024. OECD also frames this as a reversal from the expansion that followed COVID-19 and the Ukraine war. The IMF’s 2026 analysis2 of aid cuts in sub-Saharan Africa describes the current shock as different in scale, speed, and uncertainty, with low-income and fragile states most exposed.
The learning currently is that African-led philanthropy is no longer only an opportunity. It is becoming part of a survival architecture.
In 2025, the uncertainty in global development looked like an opening for African-led philanthropy. In 2026, it looks more like a test. Aid cuts have accelerated. Development finance is becoming more private-capital-driven. AI is changing how legitimacy and visibility are produced. The question is no longer whether African-led philanthropy is necessary. It is whether it can organize itself quickly enough, intelligently enough, and inclusively enough to become infrastructure — not just generosity.
What I underestimated: scarcity does not automatically create solidarity
First we made an assumption that the decline of “big aid” would force and/or create space for African-led collaboration. It creates the need for collaboration, yes. But we see that in practice, scarcity also produces competition, hoarding, short-termism, and institutional self-protection. Local organizations may collaborate more, but only if there is deliberate infrastructure for pooled funding, shared governance, common back-office systems, trust-building, and fair distribution of visibility and resources.
Second, was that African-led philanthropy would naturally accelerate as foreign aid contracts. The desire is there. The conversations are more focused. Convenings such as the African Philanthropy Conference and African Philanthropy Forum show that African-led financing, decolonised finance, gender-responsive funding, tech inclusion, and collaboration are now central field conversations. But we are learning now that capital does not organize itself. Wealth, trust, tax incentives, giving infrastructure, cross-border transfer rules, governance standards, and investable vehicles all have to be built.
Our third assumption was that pooled funds are automatically protective. They can be, but only if they do not recreate the same intermediary problem, now dressed in African clothing. For instance we see that AVPA’s catalytic pooled fund work is important because it points toward flexible, patient, risk-tolerant and blended financing, including for neglected areas like mental health. But pooled funds need governance that protects proximity, not just compliance. Otherwise, the money still sits far from the people who are closest to the work.
Another assumption was that African-led philanthropy is mainly about replacing foreign aid. I now say: it should not try to replace ODA one-for-one. That is impossible and maybe even undesirable. The better role is to build resilient, catalytic, locally legitimate capital that can do what ODA has spent decades struggling to do efficiently. That is to move flexibly, fund trust, support institutions, protect experimentation, and connect informal/community-led work to larger systems without stripping it of dignity.
Our most glaring assumption was that donor dependency is the main dependency to solve. It is still a major one. But now there is also data dependency, technology dependency, AI dependency, payment-rail dependency, cloud dependency, and evidence-system dependency. Philanthropy cannot only ask, “Who funds us?” It must now ask, “Who owns the systems through which funding, evidence, identity, data, and legitimacy are mediated?”
What held up: African-led infrastructure is now more necessary
We did see that the aid model was shifting. Permanently. The OECD numbers confirm that this is not a normal donor-cycle adjustment. A new normal is being formed.
Second we rightly saw that traditional development actors would have to broaden who they see as funders. The Gavi example? It sought to broaden its donor base as aid budgets shrank, including turning to former beneficiary countries and newer donors. Morocco later made a US$5 million pledge to Gavi3, entering as a donor for its next strategic period.
We also foresaw that pooled and collaborative models would become more necessary. That is also happening. AVPA continues to position pooled and catalytic capital as part of Africa’s social investment infrastructure, and its 2026 conference framing around “Future-Building Africa” points to a field trying to organize itself around future-facing capital, not only traditional grantmaking.
We highlighted that African-led philanthropy would need policy, finance, and governance ecosystems. This has become even clearer today. The AfDB is now explicitly pushing for Africa to mobilize more of its own financial resources, estimating a $400 billion annual development financing gap and pointing to fragmented African institutional capital as part of the challenge4.
One other thing was that trust-centered governance would matter. And that now matters even more because AI and digital systems are changing how organizations are discovered, assessed, compared, and funded. Gates and Anthropic’s US$200 million AI partnership5 across health, education, agriculture, and economic mobility is one example of how tech actors and major philanthropies are moving into development infrastructure, not just project support.
What was missed: AI is becoming part of development’s operating system
AI and emerging tech is no longer a side issue. It is becoming part of how global development will organize knowledge, allocate resources, assess need, generate proposals, verify evidence, run health systems, support education, and target interventions.
As we listen and learn from the landscape and ecosystem, it is shaping up to be both an opportunity, and also a danger.
African-led philanthropy could use AI to identify overlooked organizations, translate local knowledge, map informal giving systems, match donors to proximate actors, improve due diligence, and reduce the cost of fundraising intelligence. But AI could also deepen exclusion if it rewards organizations that are already digitally visible, English-fluent, well-documented, and easy to process.
So the future question is no longer only “How do we fund African-led work?” It is also, “How do we make sure African-led work is visible, trusted, and fundable inside the digital and AI-enabled systems that will increasingly shape giving?”
What the next decade may require
Based on what we have seen happen over the past ~24 months, what was seen clearly and the assumptions that did not hold true. It appears we can look forward to a few things into the next decade or so.
Given the current trajectory of things, and the clarity that that scarcity does not automatically produce transformation, but actually also produce competition, institutional defensiveness, and more careful gatekeeping. The organizations that move through this period well will not simply be the most visible; they will be the ones able to prove value without becoming detached from the communities and contexts that give them legitimacy.
- Chances are then that over the next 1–3 years, African-led philanthropy will face a sorting period. There will be more rhetoric about localization, but fewer easy grant flows. Stronger local organizations will be asked to do more with less. Intermediaries will fight to remain relevant. Some INGOs will rebrand as “partners” while still controlling the money. The organizations that survive will be those that can show trust, evidence, networks, adaptive capacity, and financial discipline without losing their local legitimacy.
We had anticipated the need for more African-led financing and collaborative models, but it did not fully recognize how difficult the governance question would become. As more vehicles emerge, the risk is that African-led philanthropy simply recreates old intermediary patterns with new language. The real test will be whether these models shift power, risk, learning, and visibility closer to the people and institutions doing the work.
- So then over the next 3–5 years, the field will likely see more African pooled funds, diaspora giving platforms, blended philanthropy vehicles, family-office engagement, corporate social investment, feminist funds, climate/adaptation funds, and thematic collaboratives. But one key question will get louder – governance. Who decides? Who holds the money? Who validates local actors? Who captures overhead? Who owns the data? Who gets visibility?
One thing we saw clearly then, and now, is that African-led philanthropy needed to become more than a moral argument–it needed to become an organized ecosystem. What is clear now is the role of data, AI, evidence systems, digital visibility, and trust architecture in shaping who gets funded and who remains invisible. The future may therefore belong to actors that can bridge local legitimacy and global confidence without stripping community-rooted work of its dignity, context, or adaptive intelligence.
- Within a decade, we might see that the most powerful African-led philanthropic actors may not look like traditional foundations alone. They may look like hybrid infrastructure builders: part fund, part intelligence platform, part convenor, part governance lab, part trust network. They will connect community legitimacy with donor confidence, local knowledge with data systems, and flexible capital with institutional strengthening.
It would be dangerous though for African-led philanthropy to become another elite ecosystem: polished, urban, conference-facing, fluent in donor language, but still far from informal actors and community-rooted institutions. There are many opportunities now to build something different. Imagine a philanthropic backbone that treats proximity, trust, contextual intelligence, and dignity as serious assets and not outliers or nice-to-haves.
What African-led philanthropy must build now
African-led philanthropy is really not a substitute for shrinking aid. It is instead a strategic backbone and scaffolding for a more sovereign, adaptive, and future-ready development ecosystem.
I see 3 strong opportunities for African-led Philanthropy to shape itself and operate more effectively for impact with the scale and depth that is needed today.
- Systems stewardship. The opportunity to shape fields: health, education, jobs, climate adaptation, digital rights, gender justice, civic space, data sovereignty, food systems, and youth futures. This will happen if the focus is to fund institutions, not just projects. The next decade will punish organizations that only survive project to project. African-led philanthropy in a systems stewardship and backbone position can and should provide flexible core support, strategy support, communications support, evidence support, governance support, and back-office strengthening. This is how local actors become durable.
- Pooled funds that protect local priorities. Pooled funds should not simply aggregate money. They should aggregate trust, learning, risk-sharing, and accountability. A good African pooled fund should make it easier for smaller, informal, and community-rooted actors to access resources without being forced to become mini-INGOs. A pathway to doing this would be to build policy and tax enabling environments. This includes incentives for local giving, diaspora giving channels, cross-border giving rules, philanthropic registration reform, donor-advised funds, community foundations, and transparent but not suffocating accountability standards.
- Invest in data and AI infrastructure for giving. African-led philanthropy needs systems that can help donors identify credible local actors, understand context, track learning, and support due diligence without reducing everything to polished templates. The future funder will need intelligence. The future local organization will need visibility. The bridge between them is a real strategic opportunity.
What we are building toward
The future of African-led philanthropy will not be secured by generosity alone.
Generosity , giving and solidarity matter. But the next phase will require systems that make trusted local actors more visible, help funders understand context more intelligently, move resources with less distortion, and protect the dignity of the people and institutions closest to the work.
That is the bridge that now needs to be built.
A bridge between community legitimacy and donor confidence. Between local knowledge and usable intelligence. Between flexible capital and institutional resilience. Between African-led giving and the systems that can help it move with greater trust, clarity, and accountability.
At Project by Projects, this is part of the work we are thinking deeply about: how to help leaders, funders, institutions, and community-rooted actors make sense of this changing landscape and design the strategic infrastructure needed for what comes next.
Because African-led philanthropy cannot only ask how to give more. It must also ask what it is building.
And if the next decade belongs to those who can connect trust, intelligence, capital, and context without stripping local work of its dignity, then the work ahead is clear.
We need to build the bridge before the next system crystalizes exclusion.
- https://www.oecd.org/en/data/insights/data-explainers/2026/04/a-historic-decline-in-foreign-aid-preliminary-2025-oda-data.html ↩︎
- https://www.imf.org/en/videos/view/6394890681112?sort=mostrecent&page=1 ↩︎
- https://www.gavi.org/news/media-room/morocco-pledges-us-5-million-gavi-debuts-donor-global-immunisation-efforts ↩︎
- https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/afdb-meets-under-ebolas-cloud-africa-hunts-development-cash-home-2026-05-25/ ↩︎
- https://www.anthropic.com/news/gates-foundation-partnership ↩︎
