Since 2015, the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) has trained 2.5 million young Africans and provided over 21,000 of them with more than $100 million in funding. This is laudable, yet these grants only account for 0.84% of trained entrepreneurs. This is a reminder that African entrepreneurs, despite being trained and mentored, remain underfunded. Bold investments from big philanthropy could unlock the deep-seated impact that Africa needs and is ready for.

However, big bets are not without their challenges. Sometimes, donor foci change, ventures fail, and bureaucracy hinders impact. Other times, even the most passionate founders underestimate the needs of their community while overestimating their capacity in the face of volatility, weak infrastructure, and hostile systems.

A Necessary Reframing

Simple solutions are often dismissed as band aids in development because they don’t visibly address root causes, or solve problems in a complex way. However, I think we ought to reconsider what Band-Aids are.

Nearly every minute, an African child dies a preventable death caused by malaria before her fifth birthday. How then can we call mosquito nets, a simple but effective innovation that saves millions of lives, a band-aid? Similarly, evidence from Give Directly shows that a one-time cash transfer of $1000 to a low-income family immediately increased income, sustained income and assets five years after, and sustained employment up to twelve years later.

Given the paucity of local, founder and grass-roots-led voices in philanthropic discourse, it is not surprising that much-needed nuance is lost. More than any other time in history, there is knowledgeable, driven, and passionate talent willing to drive change through social innovation. What’s left are big swings.

So I ask, how can the impact sector bet on African talent, enabling co-creation and funding varied solutions to challenges that disproportionately affect them?

Transparency

Grant requirements should be incredibly candid about what funders are looking for. Grey areas, where they exist, should equally be clear. This helps funders find aligned ventures quickly, while saving the time and expertise of all parties involved.

Local Knowledge

More funders are electing to work with local partners while making grant decisions. This is ideal. Funders should seek experts who bring nuance and context alongside knowledge and experience. Local partners should not be an afterthought, but should be integral parts of the grantmaking process, as consultants, grants staff, judges and advisors.

There must also be an intentional unlearning of the hero complex. Grantees should be recognized and acknowledged as creators, experts and leaders driving change.

Standards

Big bets are risky; this is a fact. But funders can mitigate risks and prevent resulting harm through relevant criteria. For example, the Mulago Foundation only funds high-impact organizations that will scale. It does not support one-time projects. To reach non-Anglophone countries in LMIC, some funders deprioritise classic criteria such as excellent English skills in their evaluations.

Instead of becoming exclusionary, standards can be harnessed to connect African talent to much-needed opportunities.

Flexibility

Standards are required, but funders must remain flexible. The peculiarity of social innovation at the grassroots is its proximity to volatility. Rigidity can lead to wasted resources and sometimes harm.

Funders should encourage open and proactive communication with grantees to foster mutual trust. Amidst constraints, there should be trust that the grantee has the expertise to pivot if needed. The grantee must also trust that funders will support clear, communicated and reasonable decisions.

Support

Many founders find further success through previous partners. This includes training programs, introductions, nominations, and sometimes, additional funding. In a sector that is quickly losing its risk appetite despite vast potential, these means can make a difference between the venture that fails and the one that scales.

For example, Charlot Magayi of Mukuru Clean Stoves became an Echoing Green fellow in 2020. Mukuru Clean Stoves was later nominated by Echoing Green for the Earthshot Prize in 2022. Some grants include fundraising bootcamps run by experts and consultants, while other funders provide follow-on funding of up to five years if the venture continues to scale and make a measurable impact.

Sometimes, direct additional support isn’t immediately available or possible. In these cases, grantees should continue communicating their impact, while proactively identifying third-party resources or networks that could help funders close the loop.

Technology

Some funders value technology more than other interventions. Other funders believe that technology can further exclude people in communities where even the most basic needs haven’t been met.

However, while internet infrastructure remains limited and expensive, mobile technology adoption continues to rise across LMIC. Libya was the most digitally developed African country in 2024, according to the Information and Communication Technology Development Index. Yet, it ranks 115th on the Human Development Index, contending with the aftermath of years-long conflict, natural disasters and a poverty rate of up to 40%.

This tension between technological access and socioeconomic reality is evident in many African countries, including Nigeria. As a result, a segment of the population risks being excluded on both sides. They lack many resources, but the ones they do have aren’t being leveraged to address the problems they face.

Undoubtedly, the digital divide in Africa still exists. But technology will be integral to the future of big bets. The big question, however, is what kind of technology?

One of such innovations is ConnectEd, a phone-based tutoring program that delivers foundational numeracy and literacy lessons to children in low-income settings. The program uses a basic mobile phone, with no internet and no apps required. With Africa’s appetite for innovation at a high, ignoring the potential at the intersection of impact, technology, and nuance could be folly.

At the end of the year, Do They Know It’s Christmas will hit the airwaves again, bringing joy and laughter to many, never mind what it represents for others. But Africans know it’s Christmas; that is hard to miss. What matters most, however, is that the impact sector not only walks the talk but also funds it. Big problems require big solutions, ones that Africans are ready to solve. Will big aid bet on them?

If you work in funding, social entrepreneurship, or social impact, I share reflections every two weeks.

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In the meantime, if you’re looking for daily reads from me, I post practical insights and reflections from my work as a grantmaker and social entrepreneur on LinkedIn.

Concertgoers remember Live Aid for the making of successful performers like U2; However, for its beneficiaries and their descendants, Live Aid led the proliferation of the African stereotype: impoverished, filthy, lazy, and ignorant. In the years that followed, images of Africans, including children, in their most vulnerable state and without their consent, were awash in Western media.

It became commonplace for the charity sector to ask supporters to save a starving, destitute child in Africa, without context, dignity, and cultural sensitivity. Forty years later, these stereotypes, accompanied by a dangerous saviour complex and exploitation, continue to follow the continent and people of African descent.

Live Aid was a pioneer, opening up the continent to anyone with a mission and money, even if either or both were fuelled by questionable motives. Some of these missions have led to sexual violence, neocolonialism, modern slavery, corporate profiteering, and human trafficking.

While arguments can be made in favour of the 50 million pounds raised at Live Aid, its negative aftermath, including links to funding rebel arms in a conflict that cost Ethiopia 28 billion dollars in damages, can not be ignored.

Ethical and sustainable change should be a priority in a world with deeply complex challenges, many of which affect Sub-Saharan Africa disproportionately. The impact sector must create solutions that address these problems, not cause further harm. Most importantly, Africans must be co-creators of this change. Learning from, and not repeating the mistakes of the past, is paramount to this shift.

The Rise of Big Bets Philanthropy

In March 2024, MacKenzie Scott donated 640 million dollars to hundreds of non-profit organisations, awarding some of these non-profits the largest cheques they’ve ever received. To date, Scott has donated over 26.3 billion dollars to the impact sector, joining the list of individuals and organizations taking big bets in philanthropy.

Defined by the MacArthur Foundation as, ‘time-limited investments in grantmaking with the potential for transformative change,’ big bets are large, unrestricted donations to organizations solving critical problems.

Depending on who you ask, big bets are measured by the size of the award, timing, risk involved, or the lack of restriction. For the Pershing Square Foundation, it is not about the size of the award but instead, about providing funding and supporting resources to social entrepreneurs, whenever and however they need it to make sustainable change. To critics like Larry Kramer, former president of the Hewlett Foundation, the better bet is giving consistently to smaller non-profits and social enterprises that are closer to the problems.

Personally, I consider big bets to be a reflection of the risk involved: the risk of not providing support in dire circumstances and the risk of not supporting a venture with the potential to have maximum impact.

Regardless of the size of the organization and award, big bet philanthropy has the potential to support the most impactful solutions driven by under-resourced founders in Sub-Saharan Africa who would typically not have access to such opportunities.

For example, a big bet award from The Rockefeller Foundation to Food4Education, an organization that began as a small kitchen twelve years ago, has led to 1.6 million Kenyan students receiving nutritious meals daily, along with increased enrollment in school. Without the funding, many children would have continued to attend school hungry, at risk of malnutrition, unable to properly absorb knowledge and a high likelihood of dropping out. Food4Education then received a 2-million-dollar grant from the Skoll Foundation to continue this transformative work. It is one of the most prominent locally-led school feeding programs in Africa today.

The Rockefeller Foundation’s investment in the non-profit has led to a 9-dollar return on every dollar donated, a high risk that has led to high rewards.

Big bets can also be a springboard for new organizations as well as social enterprises in hard-to-reach places serving the most vulnerable communities. Both ventures are often snubbed by funders. Most new organisations lack the highly-regarded traction and founder clout. But for organizations working in remote places, it is less simple. While funders may be interested in solving the problems faced by those at the last mile, their focus is often on partnering with renowned organizations typically led by principals who might lack the context, patience, and personal connection that distributing such interventions often requires.

With comparably smaller but equally impactful grants, funders like D-Prize invest in these outliers, taking bets on first-time founders reducing poverty in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.

In 2018, Charlot Magayi won the D-Prize award to launch Mukuru Clean Stoves. Its goal was to reach 530 people in three months through a female-led business distributing affordable cookstoves to reduce health risks and combat poverty in the Kibera slums of Kenya. Mukuru Clean Stoves ran a successful pilot that led to savings in household fuel costs, prevention of respiratory diseases and, for women and girls, reduced time spent fetching firewood daily.

Four years later, Mukuru Clean Stoves became the winner of the Earth Shot Prize in 2022, receiving 1 million pounds in funding. Today, Mukuru Clean Stoves is used in 200,000 homes in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya.

Not only did this unprecedented, initial support lead to increased impact, but it also paved the way for further investment and innovation. This happened because a funder took a big bet on a social enterprise, which may not have been funded otherwise, and catapulted its impact.

Next essay: To Rip Off the Band-Aid, Bet on Social Innovation

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If you work in funding, social entrepreneurship, or social impact, I share reflections every two weeks.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for daily reads from me, I post practical insights and reflections from my work as a grantmaker and social entrepreneur on LinkedIn.

What would it look like to create an internship program that matches young Nigerian women with paid internships at impact-focused organisations?

By November 2025, the pilot was complete thanks to the support of Fora Network for Change and Virgin Unite.

The Interns Program placed young women into eight-week internships, complemented by a weekly mentorship program focused on building soft skills. These women worked across education, artificial intelligence, development, and the arts, supporting work that led to real change.

For the interns, the program led to improved skills, increased confidence, increased income, and a return offer. For the host organisations, they received valuable contributions which advanced their organisation’s work.

For me, running the pilot meant sitting with trade-offs I hadn’t fully anticipated between access and sustainability, testing and scale.

The outcomes were positive, but they are not the most interesting part. This essay is about what the pilot revealed about demand, capacity, selection, and the quiet decisions that shape access.

Demand is not the issue; capacity is.

In four days, the programme received 1117 applications for five internship places. On the other hand, we saw interest from nearly 40 organisations willing to host interns. Unfortunately, we could only onboard so many, and we had to decline many incredible women and organisations.

This confirmed something I’ve seen repeatedly in grantmaking and programs: Access is not limited because people don’t want opportunity. They do. But many systems are not built to handle demand responsibly, whether intentionally or recklessly. 

Designing for scale without causing burnout is hard, for both applicants and operators. We could have said yes to more women or more organisations, but it wasn’t the right time nor the purpose of the pilot. It was tough, but it was essential for the future we are creating. 

Selection is a design decision

When demand far exceeded capacity, I had to shorten application timelines, tighten criteria (even more than before), and make hard calls quickly. Misaligned applications were the first to go.

For example, we received applications from candidates with up to five years of experience, even though we stated that the program was for women in their final year of university or 1-2 years post-graduation.

In highly competitive processes, alignment becomes a first filter, not because talent is absent but because capacity is finite.

Good intentions collapse without clear communication

During the program, one of the most important operational decisions was clear communication channels between interns, host organisations, and Sisterly HQ.

For the interns, mentorship calls were not just about soft skills. They were also a chance to catch up, share lessons from the previous week, share wins with the cohort, share concerns or challenges that arose during the week, and feel seen, heard, and supported.

What this pilot reminded me is simple but uncomfortable: opportunity alone is not enough. Without structure, feedback and honest limits, access can do more harm than good. Systems that care about people must be designed to hold them, not just invite them.

Mentorship works when paired with real responsibility

Mentorship for women has received a lot of flak in recent years. But I really believe there’s still a place for mentorship in today’s professional world, when done right.

Every week, the interns attended sessions covering topics including professional communications, remote work, leadership, mental health, and personal branding. It was practical, grounded and sometimes even fun.

But it worked because the interns were doing real work, testing everything they were learning every week at host organisations. They were not learning theories that wouldn’t apply to real life; they were showing up and applying their lessons in real time. This pairing of responsibility and reflection is what turned learning into confidence.

The system worked because it was small, honest and iterative

I didn’t try to build a perfect program. My goal was to build a testable one. Every choice, from creating an interest form (which actually backfired because we ended up receiving X5 of the initial interest) to mentorship cadence, required trade-offs.

And every trade-off taught me something about what the opportunity ecosystem can and cannot absorb at once. These lessons will inform scale.

Good design isn’t about starting big. It is about testing honestly, building capacity, creating clear communication channels, and integrating feedback. That is what turns opportunity into real impact.

If you work in funding, social entrepreneurship, or social impact, I’ll be sharing more reflections every two weeks.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for daily reads from me, I post practical insights and reflections from my work as a grantmaker and social entrepreneur on LinkedIn.

However, if you told the new graduate me that I would become a grantmaker, she might not have believed you. Two years later, it is a journey that has given me so much perspective.

Grantmaking, like beekeeping, is complicated. Funders are the queen to whom lots of applicants swarm. Many parts sting. But oh, how sweet is the honey! Honey, for me, has never changed. My goal as a grantmaker is to help changemakers and funders intersect in a way that makes the most impact. Our world is teeming with as much talent as there is need, but resources are finite. My work connects teams to opportunities that help them positively impact thousands and even millions of lives.

In two years, I’ve evaluated thousands of grant applications, listened to hundreds of aspiring and established social entrepreneurs and funded dozens of new organisations distributing products and services aimed at reducing poverty. My time as a grantmaker has taught me a lot. And if I could tell the new graduate me anything, I would tell her what to expect.

You’ll get a lot of pushback

The first time I received an insulting email from an applicant, I was shocked. Surely, this wasn’t for me. But it was, and it wasn’t the last one. There’s a thin line between advocating for your idea and being unreasonable. Unfortunately, many people cross it. Rejection hurts. That’s a fact. But throwing a tantrum rarely strengthens your application or reputation.

On the flip side, one of my highlights of the past years has been receiving feedback from applicants, sharing how my questions and decisions helped them rethink aspects of their model they had previously ignored, or pivot from what was an objectively unwise approach to their work.

Understand that every grant opportunity isn’t right for you. Sometimes, it’s not you; it’s us. Different funders are built to support different kinds of work. Other times, it is you. In either case, a strongly worded email is never the Hail Mary you think it is.

Witnessing impact will change you

I’ve found that being a grantmaker is quite like talent management. You scout for passion and potential, diamonds in the rough, if you will. My work, in particular, discovers social entrepreneurs at the beginning of their social change journeys. You have your hopes and predictions for what their impact looks like in five or ten years, but you have no way of knowing.

One of the highlights of my last year was visiting two grantees in Nigeria, five years after they received their seed grant. Lafiya has scaled contraceptive access to multiple states in Northern Nigeria. HealthPort now strengthens oxygen access in 10 hospitals in South-West Nigeria, saving critical care patients.

Seeing their work in person reminded me that evaluations aren’t just rows in a spreadsheet. They are decisions that shape real lives, from a young woman in Sokoto to a premature baby in Lagos.

Sometimes, all you need is to touch grass, literally. Get out there and visit your grantees. Ask questions, listen to the stories of participants, and observe what happens beyond the cheque.

Your definition of success will change

Early in my career, success meant more numbers. Now, I think differently.

My goal during outreach isn’t to collect more applications but to reach better-matched applicants. I care more about the quality and the clarity of the pool than the volume. I am thinking, how can I help more people to succeed in this cycle?

In the same vein, bigger numbers don’t always equate deeper impact in social entrepreneurship. Many people love the optics of big numbers. We’ve reached 300K people in three months. But how much of the initial transformation remains after six to twelve months? Sometimes, real change looks like 100 people served well, then 500, and then scale.

Boundaries protect everyone

I was at a workshop a few months ago, when an aspiring founder asked for my personal phone number. A few years ago, I might have said yes. This time, I declined.

Many impact professionals burn out because the boundaries are always blurred. And honestly, it’s hard to pause when the need never stops. Rest is a privilege. It shouldn’t be, but it is. The privilege of having balance and the space to slow down. I’ve learnt to honour this privilege by being intentional about it.

Rest allows you to bring your best self back to work. And it doesn’t just protect grantmakers, it also protects the work itself. When you’re rested, you think more clearly, listen more deeply, and make better decisions.

Trust is currency

In the funding pipeline, trust is the gift that keeps on giving. Like most people, you won’t give money to someone you don’t trust. Yet, many aspiring social entrepreneurs ask funders to back them without showing why they are credible and how they can deliver. Even after the first cheque clears, trust is still what helps you grow and scale. The organisations that create the most impact are often the ones that are trusted by their funders and their participants.

On the funder side, trust matters too. Micromanaging entrepreneurs rarely strengthens outcomes. If you chose them, trust them. Remain a partner, not a controller. Is this sometimes risky? Yes. But big bets require calculated risks, and it is worth it when these risks lead to outcomes like thousands of women gaining access to free, safe contraceptives.

These two years have changed how I think about impact, readiness, and decisions. If you work in funding, social entrepreneurship, or social impact, I’ll be sharing more reflections every two weeks.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for daily reads from me, I post practical insights and reflections from my work as a funder on LinkedIn.