By Lusako Munyenyembe, Program Officer, Ford Foundation Southern Africa Officer
Making sense of the current moment
The Ford Foundation office for Southern Africa’s recent research commissioned to make sense of the current moment offers sobering insights: the world as we have known it is unravelling. The post-world war II order that anchored global systems is fraying, multilateral institutions are under unprecedented strain, and Africa finds itself, once again, at the centre of a global scramble, this time for the critical minerals that will power the green economy, artificial intelligence, and the defence sectors. Yet within this turbulence lies a question that should preoccupy every philanthropic actor committed to justice and equity: are we equipped not merely to respond, but to fundamentally reimagine our role?
The research papers, discussed during the Foundation’s May 2026 convenings, present an uncomfortable truth: the old playbook for philanthropy’s support to civil society is under serious constraint. We are witnessing more than just the “shrinking civic space” we’ve long campaigned against; we are staring down a fundamental breakdown in governance. The distance between the average citizen’s fight for survival and the halls where decisions are made has turned into a chasm. Real power has migrated—it’s now hidden within opaque executive offices, security apparatuses, and informal power brokers, often shielded by global arrangements that evade any form of democratic accountability. Civil society, despite remaining technically sophisticated, faces a crisis of legitimacy. Professionalised and donor-dependent, many organisations are perceived by the very citizens they claim to represent as elite-driven and disconnected from grassroots realities.
This legitimacy crisis demands that philanthropy confront an uncomfortable question: have we inadvertently built organisational capacity whilst failing to build civic power? The research suggests we have. The traditional philanthropic model of project-based investments is not delivering the desired result. By prioritizing institutional capacity such as (skills, systems, delivery mechanisms) we have successfully professionalised the sector, but we have failed to tilt the scales of power in favour of the public. This approach has created a compliance trap: it incentivises organizations to play by the rules rather than to challenge them. This has resulted in a dysfunctional civic landscape divided between two extremes: capable and institutionalised organizations that are increasingly disconnected from grassroots struggles, and mobilised community and youth-led movements that remain precarious, under-resourced, and vulnerable to repression.
Geopolitics cannot be ignored
Africa has become the world’s most sought-after geopolitical partner, controlling 60% of the world’s arable land and vast mineral reserves. The continent being pursued by powers from the USA and China to regional players like Qatar, offers the continent unprecedented leverage to demand better trade and development finance. However, this opportunity creates a dangerous paradox: because African nations remain fragmented, this courtship is fuelling a modern form of dominance rather than development. By negotiating individually rather than as a unified block, countries are falling into transactional deals that prioritize elite interests over public interest, such as minerals for security agreements in the DRC or oil contracts in Somalia. This shift is not just geopolitical but economic. While Europe remains a major trading partner, Africa’s trade reliance on Asia has significantly risen, and the continent is being reshaped by external priorities. The underlying cause of this vulnerability is the power gap within continental bodies; The African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) retain normative influence but limited enforcement capacity, leaving member states vulnerable to transactional diplomacy that privileges elite interests over public welfare.
The implications for the development sector, and philanthropy specifically, are stark. The risk is that the green economy transition, driven by demand for lithium, cobalt, and copper, will reproduce historical patterns of extraction without local beneficiation, value-addition, or community participation. If civil society lacks the power to hold governments accountable for these deals, and if philanthropy continues to fund isolated organisations rather than systemic accountability mechanisms, Africa will once again find itself as a site of resource extraction rather than sustainable development.
The strategic pivot: toward systemic resilience
What, then, is required? The research offers a clear directive: philanthropy must shift from funding discrete grantees to supporting civic ecosystems.
If we view civil society as a vast, complex machine, our current funding model is only paying for the individual parts, ignoring other aspects that allows them to function together. An ecosystem approach is our opportunity to become the architects of those connections. Our role is to bring the pieces together: the formal institutions that hold structural power, the informal networks that provide grassroots legitimacy, the legal actors that defend rights, and the organizers who mobilise communities. By supporting the translators and “connectors” those civic actors who speak the languages of both the grassroots and the boardrooms, we can ensure that when one part of the movement moves, the whole field moves with it. This is a commitment to ensuring no movement acts in isolation. By offering both the stability of long-term partnership and the speed of emergency response, we help ensure that the entire civic field is always ready, always connected, and always supported.
This requires a fundamental shift in philanthropic practice. It means using convening power to facilitate engagement amongst community groups, civil society, government departments, business, local authorities, and sector experts. It means funding intermediaries who can channel resources to informal networks unable to meet rigid registration requirements. It means adopting trust-based approaches that value political relevance over bureaucratic compliance. And it means accepting that parts of the civil society sector may need to dissolve, consolidate, or fundamentally transform based on their continued relevance to evolving contexts.
The imperative to revive the African agenda
A critical insight from the Ford Foundation’s sensemaking research is the need to revive the African agenda, to collaborate and stand together to protect the continent’s interests and those of its communities. This will require not only unified action, but also deeper understanding of how the world is changing and what is needed to navigate that space effectively. The research emphasises that Africa must avoid repeating extractive practices, whether in the general development sector or specifically in the green economy and Just Energy Transition (JET). This transition must be people-focused, benefiting African communities rather than external agendas.
For philanthropy, this demands difficult choices about posture and partnership. It means recognising that old power structures remain unbroken, reaffirming the primacy of local knowledge, and shifting decision-making power to African agencies. It means supporting civil society and media to deepen public understanding of geopolitical dynamics and monitor government-to-government deals for transparency. It means investing in Africa’s own geological capacity and capabilities to prevent under-declaration of resources by extractive companies. And it means enabling collective bargaining mechanisms, revived implementation of the African Mining Vision , that strengthen negotiating positions against fragmented, transactional diplomacy.
Looking forward: philanthropy in 2031 and 2036
What will this landscape look like in five to ten years? If current trajectories hold, we face three plausible futures:
- In the first, fragmentation deepens: African states continue to negotiate individually, elite capture intensifies, the green transition replicates extractive patterns, and civil society remains constrained and marginalised.
- In the second, a modest recalibration occurs: some philanthropic actors adopt ecosystem approaches, pockets of collective action emerge, and incremental accountability gains are achieved, but fundamental power imbalances persist.
- In the third, a more transformative shift takes hold: African states develop unified strategic frameworks, philanthropy enables genuine ecosystem-level change, civil society rebuilds legitimacy through material engagement with citizens’ survival concerns, and the continent leverages this moment to secure structural transformation on its own terms.
The determining factor will be whether philanthropy can move beyond risk aversion and embrace its own power, not as a benevolent funder, but as a strategic actor capable of reshaping the conditions under which change becomes possible. This is the innovation required: not new funding instruments, but fundamental reimagination of what it means to support justice and equity when the systems that have governed our work for decades are crumbling. The research provides the map. The question is whether we possess the courage to follow it.