Overlooked No More: Donors invest in African change makers to maximize impact

King Baudouin Foundation United States
December 11, 2020

Proximity matters in improving lives. African-led organizations are best positioned to deliver impact because their leaders are deeply rooted in the communities they serve. They were born there, went to school there, and they live there. They understand their local community, and they know what works and what doesn’t. Yet they are often being overlooked by international funders. Segal Family Foundation and the African Visionary Fund aim to change that paradigm. They are making significant investments in African leaders and African-led organizations and are spotlighting high-impact opportunities to transform development across the continent.

Research shows that only a small fraction of international funding for humanitarian and development initiatives in Africa goes to locally-led organizations. The vast majority of funds still goes to their foreign-led counterparts—organizations with easier access to capital, social networks, and the donor-speak that funders prefer. Not only is this unjust; it is also ineffective.

Local actors use resources and funding more efficiently and sustainably than their foreign-led counterparts. Solomon King, founder of Fundi Bots, a robotics training nonprofit in Uganda, shares that foreign-led organizations fail just as often as African-led organizations—but they fail later since they have more funding. “Risk capital—funding provided to an organization in its early stages—is something donors need to embrace. The impact that funders seek could be greater if they believed in African-led organizations.”