There is no question that we are living in unprecedented times. The past three years, marked by the onset of Covid-19, were an era on its own. While a global challenge, the notion of the pandemic as the ‘great equaliser’ was a complete myth; indeed, it reinforced and deepened the existing systemic structures of violence and injustice, with disproportionate impacts on women, gender diverse persons, persons with disabilities, informal workers and people of colour.
The pandemic, along with global shifts such as the rise in prominence of anti-gender and anti-rights groups on one hand and renewed vigour of anti-racist, feminist and mass civic mobilisation on the other, all make for a unique historic moment for Africa. It is past the time for Africans to take charge of the challenges brewing on the continent and reset the agenda for what needs to be addressed, and how. One avenue that can help to bolster this is African philanthropies.
The term philanthropy is foreign to Africa, but the concept has deep-seated roots in the concepts of mutuality, reciprocity and solidarity, reflected in a multitude of everyday practices — giving from what people have in the present (not just from what they have leftover). Think of African women sharing financial resources with each other and for communal growth through practices of Esusu within Yoruba culture, or the Ukub in Eritrea, where women in communities form a credit-based system through monetary contributions, and discuss socio-political and socioeconomic affairs that affect them and their communities.
Then there is the motho le motho kgomo initiative in Botswana (loosely translating to one person, one cow), where locals and others contributed to the construction of the first tertiary campus; the productive asset sharing prevalent in agrarian societies; the thousands of elderly women who took on responsibility for a generation of orphans during the HIV pandemic in Southern and East Africa; or the multitude of communal support mechanisms that people use to carry each other in times of birth and death. Read more