Africa: Making a Case for Aid – Less Donor-Curated Visibility, More Redistribution of Narrative Power

Debating Ideas reflects the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments book series, publishing engaged, often radical, scholarship, original and activist writing from within the African continent and beyond. It offers debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and reviews and responses flowing from the African Arguments books. It is edited and managed by the International African Institute, hosted at SOAS University of London, the owners of the book series of the same name.

There is a quiet power struggle unfolding across Africa’s development landscape, waged not through protest or policy, but through funding calls, curated dashboards, and strategy decks written far from the communities they aim to serve. At the center of this ecosystem is what might be called the Social Impact Mafia: an influential and self-reinforcing network of consultants, NGO insiders, donor advisors, and program officers.

This elite clique not only decides who receives funding but also shapes the contours of what qualifies as “good,” “innovative,” or “worthy.” The result is a growing disconnect between lived African realities and the narratives that dominate the development space.

This isn’t an abstract concern. Consider the case of birth registration in sub-Saharan Africa.

According to UNICEF, fewer than 51% of children under five are officially registered. In Zimbabwe, the figure fell below half in 2019, especially among rural and home births. Yet much of the funding continues to pour into digitization projects that benefit urban centres and areas already serviced. What remains is a gap between community needs and what donors are willing to fund, because the latter often prioritize tech-forward optics over grounded, context-sensitive work.

This misalignment is not limited to bureaucratic inefficiency, it is a symptom of a system obsessed with performance over substance. Development programs are increasingly designed for global audiences: media-ready, metric-driven, and brand-compliant. Local knowledge is routinely undervalued unless it can be repackaged to fit donor logic. Even the language of participation has been commodified. “Community-led” has become a label to affix on a brochure, not a commitment to relinquish power.

The social impact mafia does not operate through malice. It functions through selectivity, and its tools are subtle: grant criteria that reward certain storytelling styles, eligibility requirements that demand professional networks inaccessible to grassroots actors, and partnerships that quietly favor those with pre-existing institutional legitimacy. In this world, trust is extended not based on

proximity to the problem, but on proximity to the funding circle. The consequence is the silent marginalization of Africa’s most disruptive, transformative ideas, because they are too radical, too informal, too slow, or too unbranded to fit into slick theory-of-

change templates. Some of the most effective civic, gender justice, and economic resilience work is being carried out in informal settlements and rural nodes, but without the glossy visibility required to get a seat at the table.

This is not to suggest that alternatives don’t exist. The Segal Family Foundation, for instance, has adopted a more trust-based approach, prioritizing unrestricted, community-led funding across several African countries. Their model allows grantees to define success on their own terms. In 2020, over 800 organizations signed on to similar principles, calling for less bureaucracy, more listening, and a shift in power from funders to communities. But these remain exceptions. The center still holds, and the gatekeepers are very much in place.

What’s especially troubling is how performative inclusion has become. Many institutions loudly proclaim their commitment to decolonizing aid, diversifying leadership, and elevating youth voices. But too often, this amounts to symbolic gestures: a panel here, a soundbite there. Young leaders are invited to speak but not to decide. Feminist and queer movements are tokenized, then defunded when they become inconvenient. And criticism from within the sector is tolerated only when it conforms to its own grammar of change.

This performativity is not harmless, it is structurally violent. It displaces accountability, erases dissent, and rewards conformity. More dangerously, it replaces transformation with theatre, projecting the illusion of progress while cementing existing hierarchies. Africa does not need more donor-curated visibility. It needs a redistribution of narrative power.

The recent moves to scale back U.S. foreign assistance, particularly USAID funding, could radically alter this ecosystem. For years, USAID has shaped Africa’s development agenda through large-scale grants that often favor big implementers with the right connections and branding. A pullback could disrupt this status quo, forcing donors to rethink their reliance on elite intermediaries. But it could also deepen inequities: smaller, community-rooted organizations may be left scrambling as big players pivot to chase private capital and corporate partnerships. Whether this shift dismantles the social impact “gatekeepers” or simply reshuffles them depends on how funding is restructured and whether African governments and philanthropists step in to fill the gap.

Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters

Success!