Author: Ntando Hoza

Adɔyɛ: Gendered African Philanthropy and Social Investment – Power, Work, Care and Institutional Futures

Journal: International Review of Philanthropy and Social Investment

Guest Editors

1. Prof. Hlengiwe Ndlovu, CAPSI, Wits Business School, University of the Witwatersrand,   South Africa

2. Prof. Chipo Hungwe, Women ‘s University in Africa, Zimbabwe 

3. Dr Fulata Moyo, Thimlela-STREAM, Malawi 

4. Dr Thelela Ngcetane-Vika, Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand,     

   South Africa

5. Dr Babongen Olemb  Suzanne Amélie, Department of History, University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon

Overview 

African philanthropy has become an increasingly significant field of scholarly inquiry, particularly as researchers have worked to move beyond aid-centred and institutionally narrow accounts of giving. Rather than treating philanthropy as a practice located primarily in formal foundations, elite wealth or North–South transfers, recent scholarship has examined the wider social, historical and institutional forms through which resources are mobilised for public and collective purposes across the continent. This includes attention to indigenous giving practices, mutual aid, religious and community-based giving, civil society resourcing, diaspora support, corporate philanthropy, impact investing and philanthropic responses to crisis (Fowler, 2022; Moyo, Qobo and Ngwenya, 2023). This special issue grows out of Adɔyɛ, a programme of the Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Investment (CAPSI) at the University of the Witwatersrand. Adɔyɛ is an Akan concept that brings together ɔdɔ, meaning love, and yɛ, meaning to do or to make. The concept therefore understands love not simply as a feeling, but as something enacted, produced and sustained through practice. In this sense, Adɔyɛ offers a useful conceptual lens for thinking about philanthropy as work and practice, where giving involves relationships, responsibilities, care and forms of social action. Its use as the conceptual anchor of a pan African programme located in Johannesburg also reflects an interest in grounding the study of African philanthropy in African intellectual and cultural traditions while recognising the diversity of philanthropic practices across the continent. Adɔyɛ was established to recognise, understand, celebrate, support and amplify women’s roles and impacts across all areas of African philanthropy. Its constituencies include women engaged in everyday and organic giving; women contributing through community, civic and non-profit organisations; high-net-worth women givers; and women professionals and academics engaged with African philanthropy. This special issue is informed by that vision and seeks to generate scholarly knowledge that can deepen and advance it.

This scholarship has expanded the conceptual terrain of philanthropy. Fowler’s (2022) account of the pluralisation of African philanthropy, for example, shows that African giving is historically layered and institutionally diverse, while Moyo, Qobo and Ngwenya (2023) demonstrate how philanthropic actors in Africa have responded to COVID-19, development challenges and institutional gaps. Mpofu, Dahlmanns and Chirwa (2021) further extend the field by arguing for a social justice approach to African philanthropy, one that considers not only generosity or charity, but also the structural conditions that shape inequality and social change. Yet the growing visibility of gender in philanthropic and development discourse raises an important question: does the use of gender language necessarily alter decision making power, funding priorities, labour conditions, accountability relationships or the distribution of institutional authority? Foundations, social investors and development actors increasingly use the language of women’s empowerment, gender lens investing, feminist funding and inclusive growth, but this language does not necessarily transform the structures within which philanthropy operates. The OECD (2024) shows that gender related philanthropic giving has increased, while important questions remain about gender responsiveness, impact, transparency and accountability. Similarly, the Black Feminist Fund (2023) documents the chronic under resourcing of Black feminist movements despite their centrality to social justice struggles. The gap between gender vocabulary and gendered power therefore provides an important starting point for examining how philanthropy is organised, experienced and transformed.

Yet the gendered dimensions of African philanthropy remain insufficiently theorised. Existing studies have helped establish the breadth and legitimacy of African philanthropic practice, but they have not yet fully examined how gender shapes the organisation, recognition and distribution of philanthropic labour, authority and resources. Women are central to philanthropic ecosystems as givers, workers, leaders, organisers, social investors, fundraisers, volunteers and community actors. However, the analytical categories of the field have often made some of these roles more visible than others. Women’s participation is frequently recognised in relation to care, service delivery, community mobilisation or beneficiary status, while their authority as philanthropic actors, institutional builders and knowledge producers receives less sustained attention. Importantly, African scholarship cautions against treating gender as a universal category of social organisation. The work of Oyěwùmí and Amadiume, for example, shows how Yoruba and Igbo social systems complicate conventional understandings of gender and social roles (Oyěwùmí, 1997; Amadiume, 1987). This raises questions about whether gender alone adequately explains philanthropic authority and practice in different African contexts, or whether categories such as seniority, lineage, motherhood and spiritual office may also be significant. The special issue therefore welcomes contributions that examine how gender shapes African philanthropy while also interrogating the relevance and limits of gender as an analytical category.

This is a conceptual issue as much as an empirical one. If African philanthropy is studied primarily through formal organisations, financial transfers, donor strategies or measurable outputs, then the relational and labour-intensive dimensions of philanthropic life are easily obscured. The result is not only an incomplete account of women’s participation, but also a narrower understanding of how philanthropy itself operates. Care, trust-building, informal giving, everyday redistribution, activist labour, community accountability and organisational endurance are not incidental to philanthropy; in many contexts, they are part of its infrastructure. The question, then, is not simply how to include women more fully in philanthropy studies, but how the field changes when gender is treated as constitutive of philanthropic practice, governance and knowledge.

The African Philanthropy Network’s Women and Philanthropy in Africa offers an important point of departure. Based on research across Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique and Uganda, the report documents women’s giving as both material and relational, including money, time, care, food, labour, expertise, networks and social support (African Philanthropy Network, 2023). Its contribution lies in showing that women’s philanthropy is not confined to formal institutions or elite giving, but is embedded in community relations, social obligations and everyday practices of support. At the same time, the report points to constraints that remain central to the field, including unequal access to resources, limited recognition, and uneven participation in decision-making. This resonates with scholarship on horizontal philanthropy, which highlights how people with limited resources support one another through reciprocity and solidarity (Wilkinson Maposa et al., 2005; Wilkinson Maposa & Fowler, 2013). Aina and Moyo (2013) similarly situate African philanthropy within practices of giving and helping shaped by social relations and context, while Mahomed and Moyo (2013) highlight the relationship between philanthropy and power.

These findings open a wider scholarly agenda. We still know too little about how gender shapes philanthropic authority, organisational cultures, labour relations, funding flows, social investment models, accountability practices and impact measurement. Further work is also needed on how young women experience work in philanthropic and non-profit sectors; how women-led organisations navigate short-term funding and donor accountability; how feminist funds and social enterprises build institutional sustainability; how care labour is normalised within civil society; and how digital economies, platform work and financial technologies are reshaping women’s participation in philanthropic futures.

This agenda is made more urgent by the changing terrain in which philanthropy and social investment now operate. Across African contexts, philanthropic actors are increasingly drawn into responses to unemployment, inequality, gender-based violence, democratic fragility, climate insecurity, digital exclusion, civic space restrictions and the weakening of public welfare systems. These pressures are unfolding alongside a significant contraction in official development assistance: ODA fell by 23.1% in 2025, with bilateral ODA to sub–SaharanAfrica declining by 26.3%, and further reductions are projected for 2026 (OECD, 2026).These shifts have intensified questions about who resources social life and sustains civic and community institutions in Africa. These issues are commonly framed as development challenges, but they are also questions about power, work, care, recognition and institutional responsibility. In many settings, women and young people carry significant portions of this work through non-profit organisations, community welfare systems, advocacy networks and informal infrastructures of care. Their labour translates philanthropic commitments into social practice, but the conditions under which this labour is performed remain under-examined.

African feminist and decolonial scholarship provide important resources for deepening this conversation. Tamale (2020) insists that African feminist analysis must attend to the entanglements of coloniality, patriarchy, class, sexuality, law, religion, and knowledge production from African standpoints. Okech (2020) shows how decolonial and feminist projects often depend on labour that is institutionally undervalued, even when it is politically and intellectually generative. For philanthropy studies, these interventions invite us to ask how knowledge, labour and authority are organised within philanthropic systems, and whose practices become recognised as theory, leadership or impact.

This special issue asks what becomes visible when African philanthropy and social investment are studied through women’s work, giving, care, power and institutional life. We invite scholarly contributions that place women, gender and feminist questions at the centre of African philanthropy and social investment. We are interested in how philanthropic systems are built, who sustains them, whose labour they rely on, whose leadership they recognise, and what forms of social change they make possible.

The aim is not to add women to an already established account of African philanthropy. It is to reconsider the field from the vantage point of gendered practice, labour, governance, knowledge and political economy. We welcome papers that move beyond celebratory accounts of inclusion and examine the tensions that shape philanthropic life: how social justice missions are organised internally; how women-led organisations are resourced; how care is valued or displaced; how donor accountability intersects with community accountability; and how social investment models may either reproduce or transform unequal relations of power.

This special issue, therefore, seeks to consolidate scholarship on gendered African philanthropy and social investment. We invite papers that treat gender not as a discrete topic within philanthropy, but as part of the architecture through which philanthropy is organised, practised and understood. We are also interested in work that brings labour and care into philanthropy studies, examines the political economy of feminist funding and women-led institutions, and takes African women’s practices of giving, organising and institution-building as sources of conceptual and empirical insight.

Thematic Focus

To ensure coherence, the special issue is organised around six interrelated themes.

1. Women’s giving, leadership and philanthropic authority

This theme focuses on women as givers, organisers, philanthropists, social investors, institutional leaders, diaspora actors, movement funders and community builders. We welcome papers that examine everyday giving, high-net-worth philanthropy, religious and faith-based giving, women’s associations, informal networks, mutual aid, diaspora philanthropy and women’s roles in formal philanthropic institutions. Particular attention is given to the often under examined role of women in organising and sustaining faith-based giving through religious institutions, networks and community structures. Consistent with Adɔyɛ’s pan-African framing, contributions are welcome from and about all African geographies and the African diaspora. The programme’s inclusive conception of women, in all their diversity, including across class, age, disability, and location, is reflected in this theme’s scope.

Possible questions include: How do African women define and practise philanthropy? What forms of women’s giving remain invisible within dominant philanthropic frameworks? How do faith, religious institutions and community networks shape women’s philanthropic practices and authority? How do women exercise authority in philanthropic institutions and community-based systems? What histories of women’s giving and institution-building have been overlooked? How do class, age, sexuality, disability, race, ethnicity, religion and location shape women’s philanthropic agency?

2. Gender, youth and philanthropy

This theme examines young people, especially young African women, as workers, organisers, beneficiaries, volunteers, innovators, researchers and emerging leaders within philanthropic and non-profit ecosystems. It responds to the need for deeper scholarship on the relationship between philanthropy, youth transitions, dignified and fulfilling work, civic participation and social mobility. We are particularly interested in work that examines how philanthropic and non-profit organisations create, limit or transform opportunities for young women under conditions of unemployment, precarity and uneven development.

Possible questions include: How do young African women enter and experience philanthropic, non-profit and social investment sectors? What forms of work, learning, leadership and mobility do these sectors make possible? How do youth-focused philanthropic interventions understand dignity, fulfilment, agency and economic empowerment? How are young women positioned within programmes that claim to support inclusion, employability or leadership? What kinds of institutional pathways are needed for young women to move from participation to authority?

3. Work, care and precarity in philanthropic and non-profit ecosystems

This theme examines the labour that sustains philanthropy, civil society, non-profit organisations, NGOs, social enterprises and community welfare systems. We are interested in the relationship between the public commitments of the sector and the internal conditions under which many women, especially young women, work.

Possible questions include: What does dignified and fulfilling work mean in philanthropic and non-profit sectors? How are care, emotional labour, volunteer labour and activist labour valued or devalued? How do wages, contracts, mobility, burnout, harassment andorganisational culture  shape women’s experiences of work? How do social justice-oriented organisations reproduce or resist gendered precarity? What institutional futures become possible when care is treated as infrastructure rather than sentiment?

4. Feminist funding, women-led institutions and social investment

This theme focuses on funding architectures, institutional survival and the politics of resource allocation. We welcome papers on feminist funds, women-led philanthropic institutions, women-led social enterprises, grassroots organisations, participatory grant-making, impact investing, gender-lens investing, sustainable resourcing and alternative financing models.

Possible questions include: How do resources flow to, through and from women-led organisations? What funding practices strengthen or weaken feminist autonomy? How do donor reporting, short-term funding, risk frameworks and impact metrics shape women-led institutions? How do women-led organisations build sustainability under conditions of scarcity? What would accountability look like if it were oriented not only upward to funders, but also outward and downward to communities, movements and workers?

5. Technology, policy and the futures of gendered social investment

This theme examines the changing institutional and technological conditions shaping African philanthropy and social investment. We welcome papers on digital philanthropy, platform economies, crowdfunding, fintech, mobile money, diaspora remittances, artificial intelligence, feminist data justice, policy frameworks, regulation, civic space and gender-responsive governance.

Possible questions include: How are digital economies reshaping women’s work and philanthropic participation? What opportunities and risks are created by technology-enabled giving, platform work and digital finance and remittance? How do diaspora remittances intersect with philanthropy and social investment, and how do women shape these flows?How should gendered philanthropy be governed and regulated? What policy environments enable women-led organisations and social investment initiatives to flourish? How are artificial intelligence tools being used in grant making, due diligence and impact measurement, and what gendered implications do these uses have? How can measurement frameworks capture dignity, agency, care, accountability and long-term social transformation?

6. Knowledge production and the institutional futures of African philanthropy

This theme explores African philanthropy as a field of knowledge production, academic labour and institutional development. It is especially attentive to the ten-year institutional moment of CAPSI at Wits Business School and to the broader question of how African philanthropy becomes established as a field through research centres, universities, journals, postgraduate training, archives, teaching, convening and scholarly networks. We welcome papers that examine women scholars, feminist epistemic communities, academic leadership, mentorship, editorial work, field-building and the politics of producing knowledge from African institutional locations.

Possible questions include: How has African philanthropy been built as a scholarly field, and whose labour has made that possible? What role do women scholars, research centres, universities and feminist networks play in shaping the field’s concepts, methods and archives? How do philanthropic institutions support or constrain academic knowledge production? What does it mean to study philanthropy from African institutional locations? How can academic programmes, journals, research networks and centres strengthen the next generation of African philanthropy scholars? How do we preserve institutional memory while also opening the field to new feminist, youth-led and community-rooted forms of knowledge?

Types of Contributions

We welcome submissions that are theoretically ambitious, empirically grounded and methodologically rigorous. Contributions may include:

● empirical research articles;

● conceptual or theoretical articles;

● comparative country or regional studies;

● historical or archival studies;

● methodological papers;

● practice-informed scholarly articles;

● critical literature reviews with a clear analytical contribution.

● Practitioner reflections or field notes

The special issue will also include a substantive guest editorial introduction of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 words. The introduction will synthesise the contributions, develop the conceptual argument of the issue and articulate its wider contribution to scholarship on African philanthropy and social investment. 

We welcome qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods work, as well as historically grounded, ethnographic, participatory, feminist, organisational, policy and political economy approaches. Papers may focus on a single country, compare African contexts, examine regional or diasporic dynamics, or connect African cases to wider debates in philanthropy, social investment, gender, work, development and civil society.

Submission and Review Process

Abstracts should be submitted to: https://www.capsi.wits.ac.za/irpsi/index.php/site

Abstracts should be 500–700 words and should include:

● proposed title;

● author name(s), affiliation(s) and contact details;

● research problem or question;

● theoretical or conceptual framing;

● methodology, where applicable;

● expected contribution to the special issue.

Please indicate in your cover letter: Adɔyɛ Special Issue. Authors whose abstracts are accepted will be invited to submit full papers of 6,000–8,000 words. Full papers will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process. Papers involving human participants must include an ethics statement. Research involving survivors of gender-based violence or trafficking must provide evidence of institutional ethics clearance and specify appropriate safeguarding and consent protocols. Authors must also declare any use of generative artificial intelligence in drafting, analysis or other aspects of the research process, in accordance with the journal’s policy. The review process will be double anonymised. Acceptance of an abstract does not guarantee publication. 

Full papers should follow the journal’s author guidelines:https://www.capsi.wits.ac.za/irpsi/index.php/site/about/submissions

For enquiries, please contact:irpsi.capsi@wits.ac.za; hlengiwe.ndhlovu1@wits.ac.za

Conflict of Interest and Editorial Independence

Any manuscript authored or co-authored by a guest editor, or any manuscript written by CAPSI staff about CAPSI, will be handled entirely outside the guest editorial team. In such cases, the Editor in Chief will appoint an independent handling editor to oversee the manuscript through the review and decision process. The guest editor will be blinded to reviewer identities and to the editorial decision. This protocol is intended to safeguard editorial independence, transparency and the integrity of the peer review process.

Timeline

Stage	Date
Call for papers opens	1 October 2026
Abstract submission deadline	30 November 2026
Acknowledgement to Authors	Within five working days of submission
Acceptance of abstracts notification	19 December 2026
Full papers due	28 February 2027
Peer review and revisions	23 May 2027
Final revised papers due	7 June 2027
Expected publication date	July 2027

Accepted articles may be published online first, subject to the journal’s publication process.

Guest Editorial Team 

Editor	Institutional affiliation and research focus
Prof Hlengiwe Ndhlovu (Lead or Corresponding Guest Editor)	Prof. Hlengiwe Ndhlovu is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director at the Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Investment, Wits Business School, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She is a sociologist and decolonial feminist scholar whose work examines gender, power, democratic governance, social movements, care and institutional transformation in Africa. Her scholarship is centrally concerned with the ways institutions organise authority, participation and belonging, and with the gendered forms of labour through which communities, organisations and public life are sustained. Her research is embedded in collaborative international projects across Africa and the Global South, including work on feminist social movements, civil society, youth, labour, climate governance, public accountability and institutional change. This work brings together comparative, interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives on gender, democracy and social justice. Prof. Ndhlovu is co-editor of Rioting and Writing: Diaries of Wits Fallists (2017) and serves as Associate Editor of Africa Spectrum. Her scholarship has appeared in Gender, Work & Organization, Journal of Gender Studies, Journal of Southern African Studies, Feminist Africa and Anthropological Forum, among other academic publications. Her contribution to this special issue is grounded in a sustained intellectual concern with gendered labour, care, institutional power, collective action and the social infrastructures through which political and economic life is organised across the continent.
Prof. Chipo Hungwe  (Co-Guest Editor)	Prof. Chipo Hungwe holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of South Africa. Her research focuses on precarious work in the context of high unemployment, international migration, and informal work, especially among the youth. Prof. Chipo uses decolonial, intersectional, and feminist political economy perspectives to study intergenerational relationships and the unpaid care work done by older women in skip-generation households. She also writes broadly on ageing, disability, work, migration, and gender. She is affiliated with the Women’s University in Africa (Zimbabwe) as Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic, Research and Innovation) and the University of the Free State (South Africa) as a Research Fellow.
Dr Fulata Moyo (Co-Guest Editor)	Dr Fulata Lusungu Moyo is a feminist ethicist of ubuntu, a gender-justice and human rights scholar-activist and mentor with vast international advocacy experience since 2006. She is an ethnographic researcher, reviewer and author at the intersection of gender, sexuality, ethics, culture and religion. She is a founder of Thimlela-STREAM, a Malawi-registered charity that uses faith-based resources for prevention of gender-based violence, co-empowerment, accompaniment and mentorship of survivors of human trafficking. She is a founding partner of Lead Integrity; a member of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians; the University of Malawi’s Kachere Series Editorial Board; UNISA’s Research Fellowship, Community Voices of Peace and Pluralism in Africa (CVPPA), and Women International Peace Center (WIPC) Board. She is a former World Council of Churches’ staff, UNAIDS’ Independent Expert Panelist, Life Peace Institute Board, AfriAus iLEAC Board, and Harvard Divinity School visiting scholar. She holds a doctorate from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, with grounding studies from Yale Divinity School, USA. She has edited and published extensively.
Dr Thelela Ngcetane-Vika (Co-Guest Editor)	Dr Thelela Ngcetane-Vika is Senior Lecturer, Wits School of Governance. Scholar on International Trade Law, Governance (Public and Corporate) and Gender Studies, Ubuntu Methodologies, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. Her research focus sits on the nexus of International Trade Law, Governance (both Public and Corporate), and Gender Studies. Her work weaves through Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Americas, with a signature strength in South-South dialogues and the evolving BRICS landscape. She writes extensively on Gender, Law, and Liberal Democracies across the world, especially on Northern hegemonies versus Southern democratic imaginaries and alternative developmental models.
Dr Babongen Olemb Suzanne Amélie (Co-Guest Editor)	Dr Babongen Olemb  Suzanne Amélie is Assistant Lecturer at the Department of History, University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon where her research focuses on international relations, regional cooperation, and environmental peacebuilding. She holds a PhD in International Relations from IRIC, with a specialization in international cooperation and environmental security in the Congo Basin. Parallel to her academic role, she serves as Project Director and Head of Libraries for BOOK A BOOK, an association dedicated to promoting reading and educational support in Cameroon. This initiative reflects her commitment to African philanthropy and community development. Her academic work and associative engagement illustrate a strong articulation between scientific rigor and social action, connecting the Francophone African space to global debates on philanthropy, environmental security, and cultural innovation. Beyond academia, she is actively engaged in international volunteering, mentoring, and multilingual research collaboration.

References

African Philanthropy Network (2023). Women and philanthropy in Africa: Synthesis report. African Philanthropy Network.

Aina, T. A., & Moyo, B. (Eds.). (2013). Giving to help, helping to give: The context and politics of African philanthropy. Amalion Publishing.

Amadiume, I. (1987). Male daughters, female husbands: Gender and sex in an African society. Zed Books.

Black Feminist Fund. (2023). Where is the money for Black feminist movements? Black Feminist Fund.

Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Investment. (2024). Adɔyɛ: Women in African Philanthropy — Programme Overview.  University of the Witwatersrand.https://www.capsi.wits.ac.za/adɔyɛ-women-in-africa-philanthropy/

Fowler, A. (2022). Civil society and the pluralization of African philanthropy: A case of back to the future? Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 51(1), 103–124.

Mahomed, H., & Moyo, B. (2013). Whose agenda? Power and philanthropy in Africa. Alliance Magazine, 18(3), 39–41.

Moyo, B., Qobo, M. & Ngwenya, N. (Eds). (2023). African philanthropy: Philanthropic responses to COVID-19 and development goals in Africa. Edward Elgar Publishing

Mpofu, T., Dahlmanns, M. & Chirwa, S. (2021). Toward a social justice African Philanthropy, Ethics and Social Welfare, 15(4), 433–441.

OECD. (2024). How philanthropic foundations support gender equality and women’s empowerment (OECD Development Policy Papers, No. 55).  OECD Publishing.

OECD. (2026). ODA projections for 2026 and the near term: Implications for vulnerable countries and sectors. OECD Publishing.

Okech, A. (2020). African feminist epistemic communities and decoloniality. Critical African Studies, 12(3), 313–329.

Oyěwùmí, O. (1997). The invention of women: Making an African sense of Western gender discourses. University of Minnesota Press

Tamale, S. 2020. Decolonisation and Afro-Feminism. Ottawa: Daraja Press.

Wilkinson Maposa, S., & Fowler, A. (2013). Horizontal philanthropy among poor people in Southern Africa: Grounded perspectives on social capital and civic association. In T. A. Aina & B. Moyo (Eds.), Giving to help, helping to give: The context and politics of African philanthropy (pp. 105–130). Amalion Publishing.

At a high-level dialogue in Lagos, African scholars, civil society leaders, activists, and practitioners examined whether three decades of anti-corruption efforts have delivered meaningful accountability and whether the conversation needs to change.

What does three decades of fighting corruption amount to if citizens still struggle to see accountability in practice?

This question was deliberately placed at the centre of the High-Level Dialogue on Anti-Corruption and Accountability, held at The Lagos Continental Hotel on September 10–11 under the theme, “Have We Lost the Anti-Corruption and Accountability Debate?”, with a sub-theme focused on power, politics, and three decades of anti-corruption work in Africa.

The two-day dialogue moved beyond treating corruption as a problem of individual wrongdoing and opened up a much larger conversation about institutions, political power, civic participation, and whether the architecture built over decades is actually capable of delivering the accountability that African citizens expect.

Nigeria currently scores 26 out of 100 on Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index and ranks 142nd out of 182 countries. The index also points to continuing governance challenges across Sub-Saharan Africa, where weak democratic institutions and restrictions on civic space continue to undermine efforts to tackle corruption.

Against that backdrop, the Lagos dialogue asked a more fundamental question than whether corruption is increasing or decreasing: Has the way we have been talking about accountability kept pace with the problem? Three decades later, what has changed?

The dialogue brought together the Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Investment (CAPSI) at Wits Business School, the Open Society Foundations, African Philanthropy Forum, TrustAfrica, and the Centre for Leadership Strategy and Development (Centre LSD), with a stated objective of critically examining the trajectories and challenges of anti-corruption efforts across the continent.

The programme was designed to bring different perspectives into the conversation rather than place responsibility for accountability solely on governments or enforcement agencies. The opening remarks came from Dr Otive Igbuzor, Founding Executive Director of Centre LSD, Chukwuemeka Eze of the Open Society Foundation, and Prof. Jacob Mati, Deputy Director for Academic Programmes at CAPSI.

Then came the question that framed the rest of the day.

“Have We Lost the Accountability Debate?”

Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria Femi Falana, SAN, delivered the keynote address, reflecting on three decades of anti-corruption work in Africa.

His answer to the question at the heart of the dialogue was clear: Africa has not lost the accountability debate. What has been lost, he argued, is sight of the purpose of accountability and, crucially, who owns the responsibility for holding power to account.

Across the continent, considerable effort has gone into building an anti-corruption and accountability architecture. African countries have enacted laws, established institutions, adopted policies, and created regional mechanisms to strengthen accountability and combat corruption. Significant resources have also been invested in these efforts. Yet corruption persists.

For Mr Falana, this presents a more fundamental challenge than simply asking whether existing laws or institutions are sufficient. If the architecture exists, and resources have been committed to making it work, who is ultimately responsible for holding those in power accountable?

It is a question that shifts the conversation from the machinery of anti-corruption to the people and institutions that must use that machinery and to the citizens whose interests accountability is ultimately meant to protect.

Rather than allowing the keynote to stand as a conclusion, the facilitator immediately opened it up for discussion, creating space for participants to interrogate the central arguments and bring perspectives from across the room into the conversation.

The first major panel of the day, “Three Decades On: Has Africa’s Accountability Architecture Delivered?”, took that question further. Facilitated by Dr Tendai Murisa of the Svivo Institute, the panel brought together Dr Sam Amadi of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thought; Comrade Hauwa Mustapha, Convener of the Movement for the Transformation of Nigeria (MOTiON); Prof. Themba Maseko, Head of School at Wits School of Governance; and Dr Emmanuel Akwetey of the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG).

The panel’s central question was therefore not whether Africa has an accountability architecture. It clearly does. The question is whether that architecture is delivering accountability in practice.

That opened the door to a broader conversation about what needs to be rethought, what can be strengthened and, importantly, what African countries can learn from one another.

Across the continent, there are different experiences of anti-corruption reform and accountability that offer lessons, even if they cannot simply be transplanted from one country to another. The task is to understand what has worked, why it has worked, and what elements might be adapted to different national contexts.

The afternoon panel, “Accountability from Below: Women, Youth and Grassroots Power,” reinforced this shift by bringing women, young people, and grassroots actors into the accountability conversation. Facilitated by Vuyokazi Futshane of CAPSI, the session featured Dr Asiphe Mxalisa, Racheal Ddungu Mugabi, and Dr Lydia Amoah.

Their inclusion reflected an important premise of the dialogue: accountability cannot belong only to institutions. It must also belong to the people, and people need the knowledge, tools and protection to demand it.

This brought the conversation closer to the realities of citizens and communities, while also raising the role of other actors in strengthening accountability. Civil society, philanthropy, researchers, and the media can all help ensure that information reaches citizens, that issues of public interest remain visible, and that those in positions of power are subject to sustained public scrutiny.

From debate to action

Day Two opened with reflections from the floor, as participants shared perspectives on the work their organisations are undertaking in their respective countries. Contributions came from Itunuoluwa Soniregun of the Lagos Youth Parliament in Nigeria, Ebere Baegbu of the CLEEN Foundation in Nigeria, Keneilwe Sadir Mapena, an election observer for SADC in Botswana, Siboniso Nyide of Corruption Watch in South Africa, and Komlan Messie of WACSOF in Togo.

These reflections provided a bridge between the broader institutional questions raised on Day One and the practical realities of accountability work across different national contexts.

The morning’s third panel, “From Practice to Possibility: Rethinking Africa’s Accountability Future,” facilitated by Dr Olawunmi Oni-Buraimoh of Lagos State University, brought together Dr Job Mwaura, a digital media scholar; Mr Arigbabu Sulaimon of HEDA Resource Centre; and Cynthia Mbamalu of Yiaga Africa.

The discussion considered what a more workable accountability future for the continent might look like in practice, moving the conversation from diagnosing the limitations of existing systems towards exploring what could be done differently.

This was followed by “Where Does the Accountability Debate Go from Here?”, facilitated by Prof. Omano Edigheji. The session brought regulators directly into the conversation, with Prince Hassan Mohammed, Director Special at Nigeria’s Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), and Wilson Uwujaren of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), drawing on their experience within anti-corruption agencies.

They were joined by Prof. Themba Maseko, Head of School at Wits School of Governance, who brought the South African experience into the discussion, focusing on the role of the Public Protector.

Prof. Maseko described South Africa as a case study in building an anti-corruption architecture that has delivered mixed results. The Public Protector’s office is high-profile and widely used by citizens to report abuse of power, but its investigative reach is constrained.

Where oversight bodies have failed, South Africa has increasingly turned to judicial commissions of inquiry, including the Zondo Commission on state capture and the Madlanga Commission. The scale of the resources required for such interventions also highlighted the cost of accountability. The Zondo Commission’s cost has been estimated at around a billion rand, while the cost of the Madlanga Commission continues to accumulate. At the same time, their work has since contributed to senior police officials and politicians facing charges, illustrating both the possibilities and the significant resources required for effective accountability.

The discussion reinforced a theme that had emerged throughout the two days: accountability requires more than institutions on paper. It requires institutions that are independent, adequately resourced and capable of acting when power is abused.

The Lagos Declaration

The dialogue closed with the adoption of the Lagos Declaration on Anti-Corruption and Accountability, translating many of the discussions from the two days into a set of commitments.

Several commitments spoke directly to the architecture question raised on Day One. Participants called for anti-corruption institutions to be protected from political capture through transparent appointment processes, secure financing, and protection from intimidation.

The declaration also called for a shift in emphasis from prosecuting corruption after the fact towards designing systems in procurement, public finance, asset declaration, and digital oversight that make corruption harder to commit and easier to detect.

Consistent with the previous day’s discussion on grassroots power, the declaration placed particular emphasis on women, young people, and civic actors. It committed to expanding civic education, access to information, participatory budgeting, and community-led monitoring, while calling for stronger protection of whistleblowers, journalists, and human rights defenders.

Participants also pushed the debate beyond conventional legal and institutional levers, calling for African-centred approaches that draw on the continent’s own philosophies, languages, and indigenous accountability practices.

The declaration closed on the importance of socialising values around accountability. Laws and institutions alone cannot sustain accountable societies without a shared culture that makes the abuse of public trust socially unacceptable — one that begins early, in families, schools, and communities, and extends into a Pan-African movement linking anti-corruption institutions and civil society across borders.

The dialogue also welcomed its youngest participant, 19-year-old Chidemwa, a youth ambassador at the AfriTrade National Diaspora Committee, who attended as a guest of one of the participants.

Ultimately, the Lagos dialogue was not simply an assessment of three decades of anti-corruption work. It was a challenge to rethink what accountability should look like and who should be responsible for making it work.

If three decades have produced laws, institutions, policies, and considerable investment, the next step may be to look more closely at what is working, learn from approaches across the continent, and rethink how accountability can become more effective, more participatory, and more firmly owned by the people.

The question, therefore, may no longer be whether Africa has an accountability debate. The challenge is whether the continent can turn that debate into systems, practices and cultures that ensure those who exercise power remain answerable to the people they serve.