The 6th edition of the African Philanthropy Conference (APC) took place at a critical moment: the global financial system is showing deep fault lines, foreign aid is retracting, and the global development community is at flux.

Faced with high winds, Africa is at an inflexion point, and so is African philanthropy. It is in this context that a community of 300+ leading voices from philanthropy and civil society came to Cairo 27-31 July for #6APC, hosted in partnership with CAPSI, Trust Africa, and the Gerhart Center for Philanthropy, to reflect and discuss solutions.

African Philanthropy and Development: The Legacy of Neoliberal Ills and a Broken Multilateral System

The conference opened with a powerful reflection of the critical realities shaping Africa’s development and philanthropy landscape on top of which is the role of the global financial architecture. In his keynote, Hakim ben Hamouda, Former Minister of Economy and Finance of Tunisia, laid bare the truth that ‘the neoliberal model of economic development has failed and traditional aid is no longer fit for purpose.’ He underscored how four decades of economic policy propagating the need for external financing resulted in Africa’s debt trap and financial vulnerability.

While the causal links between the dysfunctional global financial architecture and Africa’s dependency was made clear, so were the fixes with a sense of urgency to address Africa’s financial vulnerability. H.E. Yemi Osinbajo Former Vice President of Nigeria emphasized the role of strategy in the reform of the global finance system and the catalytic role of philanthropy in the re-design of Africa’s financial future. This idea was echoed by Winnie Byanyima Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations in her opening remarks where she invited the sector to assume its catalytic leadership to re-write the rules of engagement of what she considered a ‘broken multilateralism’. She also reminded us of the African core value of solidarity and Ubuntu—the bedrocks of collective action in the continent.

Read the full article about decolonizing African philanthropy by Heba Abou Shnief at Alliance Magazine.