By Margie Brand, Executive Director, Vikāra Institute
The dilemma of immediate challenges and underlying dynamics
Across Southern Africa, philanthropic organisations invest significant resources each year to address pressing social and economic challenges, particularly those affecting vulnerable and marginalised communities, from youth unemployment and food insecurity to education outcomes and climate resilience. These investments support innovative programmes, strengthen communities, and improve livelihoods with a focus on dignity, inclusion, and long-term wellbeing.
Yet many of these challenges persist despite decades of effort. This is not due to a lack of commitment or innovation, but because many development challenges are shaped by complex systems: where policies, political economy incentives, market dynamics, social norms, and historical and structural inequalities interact in ways that both enable and constrain progress.
For philanthropy seeking deeper and more sustainable impact, an important question is emerging: How can funders not only support programmes that address immediate challenges, but also tackle the underlying forces and dynamics that cause these challenges, including those that systematically exclude or disadvantage certain groups – and that risk allowing them to re-emerge once programmes end?
This is where systems change and systemic resilience becomes relevant for philanthropy.
What systems changes means in the context of philanthropy
Systems change refers to efforts to address the underlying structures and dynamics that shape social and economic outcomes, with the aim of creating more inclusive, equitable, and resilient systems.
Many development challenges are influenced by multiple interconnected factors. For example:
- Youth unemployment is shaped not only by job availability, but also by education systems, business practices, competitive forces, labour market dynamics, entrepreneurship ecosystems, social norms, and economic policies, including barriers faced by young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
- Food insecurity is influenced by agricultural markets, climate patterns, access to finance, infrastructure, and regional trade systems, often disproportionately affecting low-income and rural households.
- Early childhood development depends on the interaction between health services, education systems, household income, social protection, and social/cultural norms which impact unequal access to quality services across communities.
Because these challenges operate within systems, solutions often require more than isolated interventions.
For philanthropic organisations, systems thinking means looking more broadly at the foundational influences that shape issues. It involves asking questions such as:
- How do different actors, institutions, and incentives interact within this system?
- Who is included or excluded from the benefits of this system, and why?
- Where are the leverage points where relatively small interventions could create wider ripple effects?
- How can philanthropic funding catalyse change by unlocking or accelerating shifts already happening within the system?
- How can investments amplify promising innovations or initiatives that have the potential to influence the broader system?
- How can funders help align actors across sectors to address shared challenges?
- How can philanthropic investments strengthen ecosystems or institutions that enable change to spread and sustain itself?
Systems change involves designing initiatives in ways that contribute to broader system-level shifts over time.
Why should funders be serious about system change
Philanthropy plays a unique role in development systems. Compared to many other actors, philanthropic organisations often have greater flexibility to experiment, take risks, support innovation and adapt over time, to help guide change processes until they become self-sustaining.
This creates opportunities for philanthropy to play a catalytic role in addressing systemic challenges, including helping to shift systems towards greater fairness and inclusion.
Across Southern Africa, there are already examples where philanthropic investments contribute to broader shifts in systems.
What systems change can look like in practice in Southern Africa
Many philanthropic organisations in the region are already supporting initiatives that influence systems, even if they are not always described in those terms. The examples below illustrate the point.
Strengthening resilient entrepreneurial ecosystems
Across South Africa, many foundations support small business development in informal settlements. Earlier approaches often focused on training or small grants for individual entrepreneurs. Increasingly, funders recognise that business success depends on the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Some initiatives therefore support networks that connect entrepreneurs to markets, finance, mentorship, and digital platforms. By strengthening these interconnected support systems, philanthropy can amplify opportunities for many businesses, including future businesses, rather than supporting individual enterprises in isolation.
Catalysing youth employment through ecosystem approaches
Youth unemployment remains one of the most urgent challenges in the region. In South Africa, youth unemployment rates remain among the highest globally.
Several philanthropic initiatives are now supporting ecosystem approaches to youth employment, connecting training providers, employers, entrepreneurship programmes, and labour market intermediaries. Platforms that link skills training with employer demand, or initiatives that support young entrepreneurs to access markets and finance, can help shift how the labour market functions, rather than addressing only individual employment outcomes, especially for young people who are structurally excluded from opportunities.
Supporting climate resilience in agricultural systems
Climate variability is increasingly affecting farmers across Southern Africa, particularly smallholder farmers in countries such as Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe who are often among the most vulnerable to climate shocks despite contributing least to them.
Some philanthropic initiatives are moving beyond individual farm-level interventions to support broader agricultural system resilience. This includes strengthening agricultural input supply systems supporting agricultural research institutions and entities disseminating climate-smart technologies, improving access to agricultural finance, and supporting agricultural buyers to invest in farmers in their supply chains which connect farmers to more stable markets. By working across these interconnected areas, funders can help shift incentives and capabilities within agricultural systems, improving food security and wellness outcomes, while strengthening the resilience of vulnerable communities.
A systems insight
Across many sectors in Southern Africa, some of the most promising philanthropic investments are those that help connect actors, strengthen ecosystems, and build systemic resilience, unlocking change already emerging within systems and ensuring that the benefits of change are more broadly shared. By focusing on relationships, incentives, and collaboration, philanthropy can help create conditions where solutions spread and sustain themselves over time.
How can funders identify leverage points ?
One of the key ideas in systems thinking is the concept of leverage points: places in a system where targeted action can produce wider change. For example:
- In efforts to address youth employment, leverage points may include improving transitions between education and work, better aligning academia and job training systems with labour market demand, strengthening entrepreneurship ecosystems, incentivising firms to hire and train young people, and supporting new market opportunities in emerging sectors.
- In agricultural systems, leverage points might involve improving access to finance, strengthening market linkages between producers and buyers, or supporting innovations that help farmers adapt to climate change.
Identifying these leverage points requires understanding how systems function. including the relationships between actors, institutions, and incentives.
Importantly, leverage points can also involve addressing structural barriers that prevent certain groups from accessing opportunities within the system.
Why collaboration and collective action matter
One of the defining features of systems is that no single organisation can change them alone. Governments, businesses, civil society organisations, communities, and philanthropic actors all influence how systems function.
For philanthropy, this means that achieving systemic impact often requires working collaboratively with others. This includes ensuring that the voices and perspectives of affected communities are meaningfully included in shaping solutions. Funders can play an important role by supporting partnerships, convening stakeholders, and creating space for shared learning.
Across Southern Africa, multi-stakeholder collaborations addressing issues such as food systems, climate resilience, and youth employment are increasingly demonstrating the value of collective action.
Looking ahead
As philanthropic organisations across Southern Africa reflect on how to increase the impact of their investments, systems thinking offers a useful lens for understanding complex development challenges and identifying opportunities for more strategic engagement, with the potential to contribute to more inclusive, resilient, and just development outcomes across the region.
For many funders, adopting a systems perspective is not about abandoning existing programmes. Rather, it is about applying a systemic change lens and building on or adapting current work to explore how initiatives can contribute to broader shifts in the systems that shape better and long-lasting outcomes.