Beyond Charity: How Philanthropy Reshapes Power and Elites in Africa
Corentin Cohen
22 May 2026
Credit stock.adobe.com / BuyoutReese08/peopleimages.com
Whether framed around traditions of communal giving, religious almsgiving, or the rise of high‑profile foundations and billionaire donors, philanthropy in Africa is typically portrayed as benevolent and socially harmonious. Yet this comforting lens no longer captures what philanthropy does in contemporary African political economies and international relations.
This is why my co-authored article, “Business Elites and the Political Economy of Philanthropy in West and Central Africa,” published in the Journal of Modern African Studies and that I presented at the African Studies Centre seminar in late 2024 sought to challenge this limited understanding through the analysis of philanthropic practices. The aim is not to condemn philanthropy, but to repoliticise how we think about it to move beyond moral frames and examine philanthropy as a practice embedded in power, inequality, and governance.
The starting point is simple: in Africa, philanthropy is not only an expression of solidarity or virtue. It is a strategy through which economic elites engage with politics, negotiate legitimacy, and shape social order. Treating philanthropy as apolitical obscures how it has become an increasingly important mechanism for governing inequality at a time when public authority is strained and redistribution is contested.
The limits of dominant narratives
Public discourse and academic debates on African philanthropy tend to oscillate between two familiar perspectives.
The first emphasises informal, communal, or religious giving, celebrating philanthropy as embedded in moral economies of reciprocity and obligation. This form of giving plays a crucial role in everyday survival and social cohesion. Yet it is often treated as culturally rich but politically neutral.
The second centres on formalised, foundation‑based philanthropy, frequently inspired by Global North models and evaluated through metrics of scale, efficiency, and impact. Here, philanthropists appear as development partners or social innovators, filling gaps that states cannot.
Both perspectives overlook the broader political context in which philanthropy operates today. Across West and Central Africa in particular, rapid wealth accumulation has occurred alongside fiscal crises and declining trust in public institutions. In this landscape, philanthropy expanded into areas associated with state responsibility such as education, health, food distribution, urban services, and even security.
This expansion is strategic. By filling visible gaps in public service provision, philanthropists often recast themselves not just as donors, but as indispensable social actors.
Philanthropy as political practice
This is why the article argues that philanthropy must be understood as a political practice embedded in elite strategies, rather than as a neutral supplement to development.
These acts of giving often coincide with elections or regulatory disputes. Philanthropy becomes a way of translating economic power into moral authority and sometimes, of shielding wealth from political scrutiny.
Similarly, elite foundations regularly fund youth training programmes, women’s entrepreneurship schemes, or health initiatives where public systems are underfunded or dysfunctional. While these interventions can be genuinely beneficial, they also allow private actors to set priorities, select beneficiaries, and define social problems, often bypassing democratic or public deliberation.
The point is not that philanthropy “replaces” the state. It does something subtler: it reshapes relationships between citizens, elites, and public authorities. This is what makes philanthropy political.
Three types of philanthropic practice
To make sense of this complexity, the article distinguishes between three types of philanthropic practices, each with distinct political implications.
The first type is embedded, communal philanthropy: giving rooted in obligation, reciprocity, and moral economy. It also stabilises social relations between businessmen and governments whose interests may be closely associated, but rarely challenges inequality and the existing political order. Instead, it tends to reinforce it.
The second type focuses on public institutions, rule‑of‑law building, and organised “civil society.” It typically supports courts, legal reform initiatives, anti‑corruption programmes, policy think tanks, NGOs, and civic platforms framed around human rights and accountability. While often presented as neutral capacity‑building, this form of philanthropy also consolidates elites’ informal power by shaping public institutions. By funding institutional reform from outside the state, elites can shape norms, priorities, and access to legal authority.
A third type of philanthropic practice is centred on venture philanthropy, seed funding, and incubator models that claim to “Africanise” capital flows.
These initiatives position philanthropists as alternatives to development aid or traditional finance, presenting capital as locally grounded and innovation‑driven. In practice, however, they recast finance professionals and globally connected philanthropists as key intermediaries between offshore capital circuits and a new generation of African leaders, entrepreneurs, and social innovators.
As the article shows, this form of philanthropy does not dismantle existing financial hierarchies. It consolidates the authority of actors who control access to financial networks, expertise, and global legitimacy.
By selecting who is investable, scalable, or “future‑oriented,” third‑type philanthropy reshuffles lines within elite groups, elevating technocratic, entrepreneurial figures aligned with global finance while marginalising political or redistributive claims that fall outside market‑friendly frameworks. In this sense, the “Africanisation” of capital operates less as emancipation from global finance than as a managed localisation of financial power, one that stabilises accumulation by embedding it in narratives of inclusion, innovation, and elite renewal.
Why broadening the concept matters
Recognising philanthropy as political and often, elite driven processes allows us to ask better questions: Who sets the terms of this contract? Who is accountable? And can private redistribution ever substitute for public redistribution without weakening democratic claims and the common good?
For researchers, it means analysing philanthropy alongside political economy, elite formation, and state legitimacy, rather than relegating it to moral sociology.
For policymakers, it raises urgent issues about accountability and regulation.
For philanthropic actors themselves, it invites reflection on whether their practices merely stabilise unequal systems or open space for more just forms of redistribution.
In contemporary Africa, philanthropy is no longer just about giving. It is about power, legitimacy, and the contested future of social order. Any serious conversation about inequality and governance must therefore include it, as politics.
Author bio
Corentin Cohen is a research fellow and associate at the Department of Politics and International Relations and the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford.
