The term “philanthropy” is not generally understood nor is it preferred in Africa, largely because it is not inclusive in its scope and reach. It is also viewed as too abstract and elite for most parts of the continent. The classical definition, and indeed the historical trajectory of philanthropy from the American and European contexts, does not fully encompass the nature and character of what in Africa can be likened to “philanthropy.” For this reason, the term is used cautiously in this chapter to capture practices in Africa that are widely recognized as forms of giving for the public good. Some scholars refer to this phenomenon as African philanthropy, while others describe it as philanthropy in Africa and/or philanthropy with African features.
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) significantly contribute to South Africa’s economic growth and job creation; nevertheless, their sustainability is hindered by ongoing structural issues. The article analyses how digital platforms—such as fintech, digital payments, and e-commerce—can facilitate the growth and economic resilience of SMEs. The research employs a rigorous desk review process to synthesise information from academic literature, policy reports, and case studies published from 2015 to 2025. The analysis utilises thematic synthesis, uncovering four principal themes: (1) Barriers to SME Growth, (2) Digital Platforms as Solutions, (3) Obstacles to Digital Adoption, and (4) Theoretical Perspectives on Digital Adoption. Critical findings indicate that although digital platforms have substantial prospects, their adoption is constrained by infrastructural deficiencies, digital illiteracy, regulatory challenges, and perceived risks. Utilising the Technology Acceptance Model and Diffusion of Innovation Theory, the research illustrates that perceived utility and ease of use depend on structural and ecological preparedness. The document advocates for a comprehensive, contextually tailored support system that amalgamates infrastructure enhancement, digital skills education, regulatory reform, and the cultivation of institutional trust. The paper’s contribution is the reclassification of contextual restrictions as primary factors influencing digital adoption in SMEs within emerging markets.
Purpose: The study evaluates alternative financing models, including Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), municipal bonds, blended finance, and pooled instruments, to address South Africa’s critical municipal infrastructure backlog. It aims to identify feasible and scalable pathways to support Local Economic Development (LED) in a context where traditional national fiscal transfers have become unsustainable.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The research employs a qualitative desk-based methodology, synthesizing data from peer-reviewed academic literature, National Treasury reports (2021–2025), and Auditor-General findings The desk study is supported with 8 key informant interviews. The analysis is theoretically grounded in Public Choice Theory, Transaction Cost Economics, and Developmental State Theory to explore how political incentives and governance structures shape municipal financing decisions.
Findings: Results reveal a systemic crisis exacerbated by R467.2 billion in municipal consumer debt and a 22.5% underperformance in capital expenditure. Significant disparities exist; while large metros account for 58% of total expenditure and 90% of long-term borrowing, secondary and rural municipalities are hindered by poor credit ratings and high transaction costs. Furthermore, PPP uptake remains below 10% due to regulatory complexity and institutional capacity deficits.
Practical Implications: The study recommends a tiered strategy rather than a uniform approach, suggesting that complex market instruments be reserved for metros while intermediate cities utilize pooled financing and Development Finance Institution (DFI) support.
Originality/Value: This study contributes to the literature by integrating empirical municipal data with an LED framework, providing a comprehensive evaluation of multiple instruments tailored to the structural inequalities of South African local government.
Water security remains a significant challenge in the Bojanala District, North West Province, South Africa, where inconsistent access to reliable and clean water impacts community well-being and socio-economic development. Guided by the Social Ecological Model, the article aims to explore local community experiences and perceptions of water security. Employing a qualitative research design, data were collected through purposively selected Focus Group Discussions and Key Informant Interviews and were analyzed thematically with Atlas.ti. Thematic analysis revealed five core challenges: inadequate infrastructure, poor water quality, weak governance, inequitable access, and gendered burdens of water collection, all of which severely impact health and hinder economic development. Findings highlight the disconnect between community realities and institutional responses. The article advocates for inclusive, participatory governance, integration of local knowledge, inclusive decision-making, and gender-responsive policies. It concludes that achieving equitable and sustainable water security in South Africa requires targeted infrastructure investment and stronger governance frameworks.
This article analyzes the gender order in contemporary South Africa by tracing the political, ideological, and material tensions shaping current struggles over gender justice. We treat gender as a historically situated and relational structure of power, formed through race, class, sexuality, nation, and the coloniality of being and knowing. Although the democratic transition established a strong institutional commitment to equality, structural violence against women and queer people remains endemic, while Black women and gender-diverse communities continue to face economic exclusion and dispossession. Against this backdrop, political party manifestos increasingly use gender to signal stability, legitimacy, and order. Gender equality is presented as evidence of democratic progress, but is often emptied of transformative force. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of party manifestos from 2016 to 2024, read alongside scholarship on South Africa’s post-1994 gender order, we show how reactionary gender logics circulate through nationalist rhetoric, religious conservatism, traditionalist appeals, and technocratic managerialism. We argue that South Africa’s gender order is being ambivalently reconfigured as progressive and conservative projects coexist and emancipatory language is appropriated to stabilize hierarchy.
This article explores the affective and epistemic demands of ethnographic fieldwork within the uneven terrain of post-apartheid South Africa. Drawing on long-term research in Duncan Village, a historically Black township in the Eastern Cape province, I analyse how the state is encountered through waiting, silence, refusal, and care in struggles over housing, services, and recognition. I argue that these are practices through which residents navigate governance and, at the same time, conditions through which the state becomes legible ethnographically. The article makes three linked interventions. First, I reconceptualize vulnerability and refusal as constitutive features of fieldwork rather than methodological shortcomings. Second, I treat Duncan Village not simply as an empirical setting, but as a location through which post-apartheid rule can be thought through. Third, I show that knowledge of the state emerges through the same relations in which political life is endured, interpreted, and maintained. The article thus advances a feminist ethnographic practice that is historically situated, embodied, and accountable to the lived worlds through which the state is continually made and contested.
This article explores the limits and politics of feminist translation from the epistemic South, positioning Southern Africa as a critical site from which to rethink how feminist vocabularies travel, sediment, or resist across borders. Using critical discourse analysis and interpretive readings of Southern African feminist literature, policy frameworks, activist media, and oral traditions expressed in Southern African English and Nguni languages, it examines the translational frictions that emerge when dominant feminist terms such as gender mainstreaming, empowerment, and intersectionality enter local policy and activist spaces. The paper argues that these frictions reveal both the asymmetries of global feminist knowledge production and the creative rearticulations of local feminist vocabularies that exceed the limits of translation. Rather than treating untranslatability as failure, we read it as a productive site of negotiation that unsettles institutionalised tendencies towards universalisation within global feminist circulation. Through a decolonial feminist lens, we foreground Southern African women’s speech, writing, and activism as theoretical practices that do not merely receive feminist concepts but actively reshape the politics of translation itself.
This paper explores the relationships between demographic factors, financial inclusion, and philanthropic giving among women in Ghana. Using a quantitative approach, the study surveyed 300 women in the Sekyere Kumawu and Obuasi East districts in the Ashanti Region of Ghana and employed logistic regression for data analysis. The study elucidates the multifaceted ways in which various demographic and financial inclusion factors influence philanthropic giving. As a pioneering study, the Ubuntu perspective is applied to clarify the interplay between these factors, addressing the gaps in the literature on women’s philanthropic behaviours and financial inclusion in this context.
At the beginning of September 2023, Dr Judy Dlamini, the founder and chair of the Female Academic Leaders Fellowship (FALF), reflected on FALF’s progress in its pursuit of transformation in academia. Formed in 2020, FALF was an independent, registered, non-profit company that aimed specifically to empower black and coloured women from South Africa to progress into academic leadership at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). FALF had been instrumental in continuing the development of a pipeline of female academic leaders at Wits and intended to expand this initiative beyond Wits. But, one of Dlamini’s immediate considerations was to evaluate the impact of FALF. Had FALF been successful, she asked herself, in changing the faces of professors and senior academic leaders at Wits?
It was July 2021 and a beautiful midwinter day in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The temperate conditions belied the turmoil of political protests that had spread to all-out vandalism and looting across the province and, to a more limited extent, Gauteng. Durban’s inner-city, home to the Denis Hurley Centre (DHC), an inter-faith charity serving homeless people in greater Durban, was greatly affected. As Raymond Perrier, director of the Centre, watched the events unfold, he knew there would now be an even greater need for the work of the Centre. Perrier reflected on why the Centre had succeeded in providing a collaborative space for people of different faiths to come together and to work side by side in helping the homeless, when so many other organisations had failed to do so.
On 5 March 2020, the first in-country South African tested positive for COVID-19. Less than three weeks later, on 23 March, after schools and universities had already closed and a number of organisations had adopted a work-from-home policy, the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the whole country would go into hard lockdown for 21 days from midnight on 26 March 2020. As these events unfolded, it became clear that reliable, affordable access to mobile telecommunications would be critical for the country’s population in the months to come, as they had to work, study, and communicate from home. Taki Netshitenzhe, the external affairs director of mobile network operator, Vodacom South Africa, knew that this was an opportunity to demonstrate the company’s commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Vodacom’s response had to benefit society without coming at a crippling cost to the company. How to achieve this was a key question that occupied her mind as these events unfolded.
In July 2020, Charlene Lackay, group corporate social investment (CSI) manager at financial services group, Momentum Metropolitan Holdings (Momentum Metropolitan) was considering how best to monitor and evaluate the activities of the Momentum Metropolitan Foundation volunteer programme. Pressure on funding made it critical to provide evidence of what the programme was achieving. She also knew that as CSI practitioners, her department tended to become invested in their projects and that they needed to be able to pull back and assess their efforts objectively. But what would be the best way of doing this, given that the company had more than 15 000 employees at numerous job levels, a lack of resources in the human resource department, and that she had to respect privacy related to salary levels?