When doctors diagnosed Kanu Nwankwo with a life-threatening congenital heart defect shortly after his move to Inter Milan in 1996, the Nigerian football star feared his career – and his life – might be over. Successful open-heart surgery gave him a second chance, allowing him to return to football, extend his career by more than a decade, and win some of the sport's biggest honors, including the UEFA Champions League. But surviving also left Kanu with another question: what happened to children with the same condition who could not afford the cost of surgery? Years later, he turned that question into action, establishing the Kanu Heart Foundation to help children across Africa access life-saving heart surgeries that many families could never afford. "I was given a second chance. Every child deserves the same. That's why the Foundation exists," he would later say. Kanu's foundation was part of an early wave of celebrity philanthropy in Africa. Today, athletes, musicians, actors, and many other celebrities across the continent are doing more than donating money to causes they care about. By making their giving public, they encourage millions of people to participate, drawing attention, resources, and volunteers to issues that might otherwise remain overlooked. Why celebrity philanthropy works For most nonprofits, securing the public’s attention is a major challenge they face before asking for support. Celebrities, however, skip this challenge. Through sports, music, film, or comedy, they already command ready-made audiences across multiple platforms that drive donations in an instant. Davido demonstrated that power in 2021. Ahead of his 29th birthday, the multiple Grammy-nominated musician posted an account on his social media and asked friends and fans to donate to the account. With more than 30 million followers on social media, what began as a light-hearted social media appeal snowballed into the raising of more than 200 million naira (about US$485,000 at the time) in just a few days. Davido contributed 50 million naira (about US$120,000 at the time) to the campaign before he and his Foundation disbursed the total amount to about 290 orphanages across Nigeria. The campaign did more than raise money. It turned thousands of fans into donors and put the challenges facing orphanages at the center of national conversation. But reach alone does not explain why celebrity philanthropy can be effective. The connection between a celebrity and a cause can matter, too. A 2024 study examining celebrity Goodwill Ambassadors found that celebrity endorsement worked better when a celebrity had a connection to the cause they were pushing. A celebrity's personal experience with an issue, continued involvement, or a connection to the people affected can make an endorsement feel more authentic. Tiwa Savage offers a recent example of that kind of fit. In March 2026, the Nigerian singer launched the Tiwa Savage Music Foundation to train and mentor emerging African creatives in areas including music production, sound engineering, music publishing, film scoring, and music therapy. Rather than simply attaching her name to a cause, Savage is using the expertise and industry experience that made her famous to help others enter the same field. That connection can also provide credibility, something that nonprofits often desire. Research from Rutgers University–Camden, which examined more than 500 charities with known celebrity affiliations, found that associating with a celebrity gives a “credibility signal” to donors. Julie Ruth, a co-author of the study, argues that the qualities that make celebrity endorsements persuasive in commercial advertising can also influence charitable giving. “Both of those aspects—credibility and likeability—add value to a brand,” she told Rutgers Today. “We believe it’s a fairly similar process for celebrities and nonprofit organizations, as reflected in donations.” That effect resonates across many African communities, where giving has long been part of communal life, through extended family support, religious giving, and cooperative societies. A 2024 EPIC Africa report found that individual giving is one of the most important sources of funding for African nonprofits, with donations flowing within countries, across borders, and through multiple channels—not just from wealthy philanthropists or foundations. Celebrity philanthropy builds on that tradition by making generosity more visible and inviting more people to take part. Celebrity influence is not only valuable for raising money. It can also shine a spotlight on crises that receive little public attention. In 2024, Sierra Leonean author and human rights activist Ishmael Beah visited camps housing persons displaced by the civil war in Sudan. The visit was meant to draw attention to one of the world’s biggest humanitarian emergencies, and coincided with UNICEF’s efforts to raise US$9.9 billion through its 2025 Global Humanitarian Action for Children Appeal to reach 109 million children across 146 countries with lifesaving assistance. Together, the timing points to how a familiar face can help amplify humanitarian crises and bring issues that local organizations have struggled to place on the global agenda to wider international attention. From charity to institutions The more significant shift in African celebrity philanthropy is the move from one-off donations to institutions built to outlast individual careers. For Kanu, helping children with heart disease did not end with paying for a handful of surgeries. Since its launch in 2000, the Kanu Heart Foundation says it has raised about 500 million naira and funded more than 500 open-heart surgeries for children and young adults from Nigeria and other African countries, while campaigning for better cardiac care across the continent. Others have taken a similar long-term approach. Since its launch in 2018, The Trevor Noah Foundation has partnered with dozens of schools across South Africa, reaching and supporting at least 50,000 young people through programs that strengthen school leadership, improve teaching, and prepare them for higher education and employment. In Côte d'Ivoire, the Didier Drogba Foundation has invested in healthcare, including the Didier Drogba Foundation hospital in Abidjan, and in other projects, including schools and maternal health initiatives that have benefited tens of thousands of people. These institutions represent a shift away from one-off acts of generosity. They employ staff, build partnerships, and deliver programs that continue long after a fundraising campaign has ended or a celebrity has left the spotlight. Celebrity philanthropy is not without its critics. A generous donation can address an immediate need while leaving the deeper causes of poverty, poor healthcare, or unequal access to education untouched. Accountability also varies. While some celebrity foundations publish annual reports and document the impact of their work, others disclose little beyond photographs of donation ceremonies, making it difficult to assess how funds are used. There is also the risk of placing too much emphasis on individuals. Communities are rarely transformed by one famous person alone. Lasting change still depends on teachers, health workers, community organizers, and local organizations that remain long after media attention has shifted elsewhere. Celebrity influence is most effective when it strengthens those efforts rather than replacing them.
A single act of giving can save someone you will never meet. Every blood donation is a reminder that some of the most important acts of generosity happen quietly, without recognition, but with the power to save a life.
Women and girls across Nigeria often experience domestic and gender-based violence (GBV) in absolute silence, often with nowhere to turn to for help. This organization is changing that reality.
More times than we can count, storytellers remind us that, “until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.” Picture a world with me, where no matter how many lions learn to write, the interpretations are privy to the hunters only. Would we then say, the lions must learn more, than to write? At the centre of African philanthropy and interwoven in the fabric of what defines the philosophy of giving across the continent, is community. Needless to say, African heritage is imbued with a diversity of words, forms and structures (albeit informal) of generosity. Numerous scholars and institutions have attempted to capture these expressions of generosity across the philanthropy sector. Most recently, Trust Africa and Giving Tuesday Africa Hub have done well to highlight a few of these, delineating generosity practices among different African cultures. Is the narrative around our African traditions of giving enough to stir up the much needed systems shift? Are these stories replicated in the way through which programs or initiatives by philanthropists or philanthropy support organisations are envisioned, or is it just another way for us to sooth the hunter as we wait for more lions to learn to write? The advancement of cultural wisdom as a tool for social change must start from a place of introspection on how these stories and traditions inform systems change, foster an enabling environment for local philanthropy to emerge or maybe, even create a platform for stakeholders to revisit their approaches to African philanthropy. Our Heritage: The power of the African story Told over and over again, the story of Africa often begins in the pre-colonial era. A picture of self-governing communities, rich in traditional practices and connected by customs and belief systems that shaped how societies organised, related, and gave. Within these histories lies not only identity, but also a quiet archive filled with forms of giving embedded in kinship, reciprocity, and collective responsibility. These narratives carry echoes of possibility, inviting reflection on the roots of what might be called true African generosity. Yet, history does not stand still. The colonial period marked more than a disruption in governance. It introduced new systems of value, new hierarchies of knowledge, and ultimately, new ways of being. African communities were not only compelled to adapt their practices but also to reinterpret themselves through imposed frameworks. In this shift, indigenous expressions of giving were neither erased nor fully preserved, one would argue that they were reframed. Enter philanthropy often defined as the love for humanity. But within the African context, the term resists easy categorisation. Is it a lifestyle long practiced under different names? An experience shaped by community and obligation? An emerging sector seeking structure and recognition? Or perhaps an opportunity to reclaim and retell our story on our own terms? Regardless of the lens, one undeniable truth that remains is the depth and richness of culture-based giving across the continent. It is this very richness that makes any true African uncomfortable when dominant narratives reduce Africa to a landscape of need with images of helplessness crafted to appeal to external benefactors. In such moments, one must ask who gets to tell the story, the lion or the hunter? And so, a more pressing question emerges. Now that we recognise these diverse and deeply rooted forms of giving, what do we do with them? Is acknowledgement enough? Can African generosity remain a well-kept truth celebrated in rhetoric yet absent in systems of power and resource allocation? Or does this moment demand something more deliberate? A reimagining of how these practices are seen, valued, and mobilised? Visibility, Transformation or Both? “Words are sweet, but they never take the place of food.” - Igbo proverb Been to an African Philanthropy convening before? What is the first thought that crosses your mind when you are considering which session to attend? As your eyes run down the detailed agenda and you encounter a session; The true essence of African Philanthropy? Does the familiarity energise you or does it dull your enthusiasm? If you are like me, I am always excited to jump into these sessions and learn what new directions could be emerging for the sector on the continent. Well, the story is always the same, a tale of our endless forms of giving, no ignition on how these could translate to action. A good moment to pause and re-centre the purpose of this conversation. Stories of our generosity are not without cause. An understanding of our giving traditions not only spotlights our diversity and wealth as a continent but also breaks the stereotypes that have for a long time been used to shape the narratives of giving. These re-centered narratives give voice to the values that are espoused in many traditions. However, have lions been lost in the destructive nature of their recently acquired skillset unaware that the hunter has since advanced? Listening to the many thought leaders across the continent, the call to action is clear. The task for philanthropy and generally non-profits, is to move beyond aid and more proactively engage in new forms of domestic resource mobilisation or risk being swallowed up by the loose and sinking sands of the funding architecture and the ever shifting needs of those who call the shots. Is this not the perfect time to look inward and leverage the tools within the toolbox? Or have we carried stones to a gun fight? Beyond the visibility that comes with our ability to build narratives, we must task ourselves to think more succinctly on what transformation, growth and systems change actually look like from the lens of African traditions. To focus deeply on what frameworks, patterns or policies these traditions could inform and to present ourselves as guinea pigs to the very narratives we preach. Critically, the baby must not be let go with the bath water. We must celebrate our heritage while tasking ourselves to look more intently to the future we collectively seek to create for philanthropy on the continent. Beyond feeling: The work empathy cannot do One who feels the heat will seek shade - Ankole proverb If you have had the enviable privilege of sitting around a fireplace, listening to custodians of African history weave story into memory, you will know that these moments ask more of you than passive attention. The narrator draws you in, closer to the heat, closer to the truths they share, until the distance between listener and subject begins to collapse. In that space, stories do not simply inform, they make one feel. If you’ve experienced these as I have, you begin to sense the weight of lived experience, to glimpse realities that are not your own. And yet, as compelling as that feeling is, it remains only a beginning. To feel the heat is one thing but to build the shade it demands is quite another. Sooner than later the tension begins to surface. The short-lived feeling though overwhelming can be fleeting. Stories, especially those crafted for visibility, tend to distil vast, complex realities into moments that can be quickly understood and easily shared. In doing so, they risk narrowing our gaze and privileging the individual ideas over the structural approaches, the moments over the larger picture. We come away moved, even changed in sentiment, but not necessarily in understanding. Empathy, in this sense, can create the illusion of proximity without demanding the work of deeper engagement. The risk for African philanthropy is this easily translates into narratives that satisfy the need to care without unsettling the systems that require change. The story is heard, the emotion registered, and yet the underlying structures remain intact. What begins as connection risks settling into performance. If storytelling is to do more than move us, it must compel us beyond this resting point toward forms of responsibility that outlast the moment of feeling and begin to reshape the conditions from which these stories emerge. No longer at Ease When Obi returns, he carries with him not just an education from a foreign land but a quiet shift of self, one that distances him from the very traditions that once shaped his childhood dreams. In his book, No Longer at Ease, Chinua Achebe presents a character suspended between worlds, where Westernisation has not elevated him as much as it has estranged him. Obi’s aspirations, once rooted in communal values and collective progress, become entangled in individual ambition, bureaucratic pressures, and moral compromise. This story not only presents a reflection on personal failure, but about the subtle erosion of indigenous frameworks of meaning, where the promise of modernity displaces rather than complements tradition. This tension mirrors the evolving landscape of African philanthropy. It is not simply a regional variant of global philanthropy, it is distinct, shaped by rich histories of tradition and community, oneness, and countless forms of giving. Yet, as African philanthropy increasingly engages with global systems, standards, and expectations, it cannot afford to simply remain on the side-lines critiquing the rules of the game. Participation demands adaptation. To stand on the pitch and complain is to concede relevance. The challenge, then, is to engage without erasure, to assert identity while navigating influence. The task for African philanthropy enthusiasts, like myself, is therefore both reflective and active. We must draw deeply from the continent’s wealth of philanthropy networks and organisations, lived experiences, and indigenous knowledge systems not as objects of a fading past, but as captains of a much-needed future. However, reflection alone doesn’t suffice, the imperative is to shape narratives and design interventions that are authentically African yet globally conversant. In doing so, we move beyond lamentation into agency reclaiming the space to define not just how we give, but why. Until the lion learns to write, read, think and act on those very thoughts, every story will glorify the hunter.
Women and girls across Nigeria often experience domestic and gender-based violence (GBV) in absolute silence, often with nowhere to turn to for help. This organization is changing that reality.
The organizations doing the most meaningful work in African communities are rarely the ones with the loudest voices. In the Narrative is our response to that reality. Each month, we profile one selected organization engaging in community-driven work on the continent and make sure their stories reach the people who need to hear them.
Across the continent, a growing cohort of African women are doing more than giving. They are building institutions, shaping policy, and designing the communities they want to see. This profile piece spotlights the women who are most visibly driving that shift — and rewriting the public conversation on Africa's development.
Abdullahi MalumfashiFounded in 2018, the Trevor Noah Foundation is changing education philanthropy in South Africa through a community-centered, teacher-led approach.
Abdullahi Malumfashi2026 Schwab Foundation Awards, announced at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.
Philanthropy CircuitThe Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) has opened applications for the 2026 edition of its flagship Entrepreneurship Programme, inviting ambitious entrepreneurs from all 54 African countries to apply for funding, training, and mentorship.
Abdullahi MalumfashiAccording to the World Giving Report 2025, Nigeria has officially outpaced the globe in generosity.
Abdullahi MalumfashiHere are 10 concrete ways African countries lead global giving.
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