Build the institution, not the campaign.
Most funding in this field buys an event, a report, or a year of activity. Then it stops, and the knowledge goes with it. We are asking for something harder and considerably more useful.
01 / The proposition
Help build the institution that will find, document, study and develop the people shaping Africa's next chapter.
The asset this institution is building is not an audience and it is not an event. It is an accumulated body of knowledge: hundreds of African lives, documented deeply, consistently, over decades.
Nobody has that. Not the rankings, not the awards programmes, not the conferences, and not the universities, because the people worth studying are mostly not in universities and nobody has been sitting with them.
In five years that collection can answer questions no ranking can. What patterns appear among Africans who successfully build institutions? What does courage look like in practice? What causes promising people to fail? What can somebody twenty years younger actually use?
That is what a partner is funding. Not our visibility. The record, the method, and the people it develops.
02 / What a partnership builds
Five things, each of which can be funded on its own.
Costs are set per programme and per year, and we send them with the budget before the second conversation. We would rather show you the numbers in context than print an amount here that means nothing without it.
01The Journal
The editorial engine. Funding a year of it pays for finding the people, the travel, the interviews, the photography, the checking and the editing that turn one person's experience into something another person can use. It is the most visible thing we do and the cheapest thing to fund.
02A Fellowship cohort
The development engine. Funding a cohort means a named group of Africans is assessed honestly, worked with on the thing they are actually building, and put in a room with people who have already done it. It is the clearest place for a company to see what its money did.
03The Archive
The least glamorous and the most valuable. Recording, transcription, storage, cataloguing, rights and permissions, done from the first interview instead of retrofitted in ten years. Funding this is funding the part that still exists in 2060.
04Research
Turning the archive into knowledge. Researchers, method, and partnerships with universities that want access to material nobody else holds. This is where a knowledge partner gives people rather than only money.
05A named series
For a partner thinking in decades. A series of records in one field, funded to continue beyond any single agreement, with the name attached to the support and never to the judgement.
03 / Who partners with us
Philanthropy and family offices
People asking what institution can create lasting African impact beyond a single project, and who are willing to fund the unglamorous parts.
Corporates
Companies who want to contribute to and learn from the people shaping Africa's future, and who understand that credibility here comes from restraint rather than from logo placement.
Universities and knowledge institutions
Partners contributing researchers, methodology and academic rigour, in exchange for access to material that does not exist anywhere else.
Media and distribution
Organisations that can carry this work to audiences we cannot reach on our own, in languages we do not yet publish in.
04 / What a partner receives, and what they do not
What you receive
What you do not
05 / Start a conversation
Tell us what you care about. We will send the budget, the plan and the honest version of what we do not know yet.
There is no donate button on this site. That is deliberate. A single payment is not what this institution needs and it is not what a serious partner is looking for. If you would rather simply give, say so below and we will send bank details.
If you would rather talk than type, put thirty minutes in the diary and skip the form entirely.