Why foundations in Africa need to work together

(Being remarks on the meeting of African Foundations: Virtual session hosted by the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation on Monday, April 11, 2022.)

Thank you very much for this kind invite and I wish to pay special tribute to the (Chief) Obafemi Awolowo Foundation for undertaking this long overdue [Initiative] to convene all of us. I also wish to join my fellow discussants in congratulating the Foundation for reaching the 30-year milestone. Even those of us far afield at the Southern tip of our Continent are inspired by the life lessons bestowed on us by Chief Awolowo, as an example of courage, dedication, drive, and self-reliance. These are in our view the foundations upon which we can build a better Africa.

I must, from the outset, declare familiarity with the Awolowo Foundation in that our Patron, President Thabo Mbeki, is the proud recipient of the prestigious Awolowo Leadership Award, and that our Foundation has been the beneficiary of the generosity of both General [TY] Dajumba Foundation and Tony Elumelu Foundation. It’s a privilege indeed to be amongst these Foundations of these outstanding Africans and hope this would not be last encounter amongst us.

Unlike our Western and Asian counterparts, the Foundations in Africa and the developing world cannot avoid playing a practical role to defeat the scourges of conflicts, poverty, burden of diseases, underdevelopment, and continued  marginalisation of women, amongst others, if not directly by themselves to shine the spotlight on these challenges and etch them in the consciousness of those who wield political and economic power in our respective countries. The African Foundation like others in the developing world must respond to the following in particular:

• the crisis of dearth of thought Leadership in our Continent. The Continent yearns for new type of change agents, who intrinsically understand the problems facing our Continent and are prepared to craft solutions, whilst creating new knowledge. To this end, the TM Foundation and UNISA have consummated the Thabo Mbeki African School for Public and International Affairs (the TM School) which Foundations present here today can utilise as a common platform to respond to this crisis of dearth of thought leadership.
• the ongoing crisis of misgovernance of our Continent requires sober, patriotic, and third-party voices, who are not interested in contesting public power, but seek to train, guide, and cajole current and future leaders of our Continent to be positive change agents for Africa’s development. The Foundations convening power and political “neutrality” must be utilised for this purpose. The Foundations should be able to draw from the detailed work of the African Union and turn these into practical programmes.
• neither public nor private sector is capable of economically absorbing the millions of young Africans and turn them from youth bulge ready to champion neo–Arab Springs into youth divided, through entrepreneurship programmes, new skills, the exploitation of Africa’s vast resources, and, in the end, form the third layer ofsocio-economic drivers who will be a catalyst for Africa’s development. All of us must rally behind Tony Elumelu Foundation to scale their Entrepreneurship programme to make the necessary impact in Africa.
• the largely stagnant and sometimes declining standard of education requires the interventions of our Foundations, in particular these days of advanced technology. The ability of the Foundation to harness financial resources and expertise must be used to help young Africans to leapfrog other nations, especially on new technologies and related advancements, whilst embedding them in important principles and values, like self-reliance and nation building.
• our countries are inflicted by a huge burden of disease and many of our governments are unable to cope, and a need for urgent intervention is needed from time to time, Foundations in this space can play a critical role in the health of our nations, not only in dealing with the diseases but through advocacy and development of health infrastructure.
• there is a dearth of philanthropy in our Continent, the tendency is to use that simply as a matter of business promotion and charity. The issues of illiteracy, poverty and underdevelopment in our Continent are not matters of charity, but of justice. The Philanthropic Foundations in our midst must lead the way in changing this narrative so that African Foundations are less reliant on foreign donors who may seek to influence our thinking and reshape our agenda.

Therefore, as the Foundations, we are able to provide:

• a safe space to deal with issues of good governance and policy influence,
• a non-threatening entity to enhance social progress and rejuvenate economic growth,
• a necessary catalyst to challenge sterile thinking on politics, economy and social progress.

In the final analysis for the Foundations in Africa to have the desired and impact they:

• need to have dialogue amongst themselves to look at the challenges facing our Continent collectively,
• assist to build people to people relations in our Continent, in particular where Nigeria and South African Foundations can lead in this regard,
• use their collective and individual strengths to design and champion programs to deal with our respective countries’ developmental needs, and
• to support and complement one another in our respectful endeavours taking a leaf from Mrs Mbeki’s initiative on African Women in Dialogue, that looks at common challenges facing women in our Continent and seeking common programme and common commitment to respond to such challenges.

What remains a challenge for all of us is to find ways to deal with challenges of sustainability, assessment of impact and understanding our extent of influence.

In the end, our problem is that we adopted a stance where we no longer recognize each other, meet less and less together, and talk to each other less, as we fail to meet, to talk and act together, our problems multiplies and ours remain a dark Continent.

As a collective we have strength to complement one another, cross-reference our work and collaborate in various endeavours to ensure greater impact.

For us, the work to meet, to talk and to act starts now.

Thank you very much.

 

Boqwana is CEO, Thabo Mbeki Foundation.