Giveday: Fixing the Gaps in Africa's Generosity

Africa is a generous continent.

We give to family, friends, religious groups, community projects, emergencies, and causes we care about. We support each other when someone is sick, when a family loses someone, when a community faces floods, when a child needs school fees, or when a group is trying to build something for others.

We have always found ways to help one another. But while our giving has changed, the systems that help giving have not changed much. This is the gap we need to focus on.

A few years back, I saw this myself. Severe flooding hit parts of Kogi State, and I wanted to raise money for those displaced. My plan was to find a trustworthy group on the ground, gather money from those who wanted to help, and send it where it was needed. But it was not that simple.

It was hard to find out who was actually doing the work. Information about different organisations and efforts was limited. It was not always clear who could be trusted, how the money would be used, or what would happen after it was sent. What struck me was that the problem was not a lack of generosity. People wanted to help. The issue was connecting that willingness to give with those who needed help.

This experience led to the idea of Giveday. At first, we thought we were solving a fundraising issue: making it easier for people to raise money and for others to contribute. But as we talked to more people, it became clear that fundraising was just one part of a bigger problem.

We already give. We just don’t have the systems to support it well.

Think about how much giving happens outside formal charity.

A group of friends can come together to raise money for a colleague whose house burnt down. A family can raise money for medical treatment. A community can collect money to fix a road or support a school. Someone can organise a fundraiser for flood victims. A young person can raise funds for a community project. There are also charities and NGOs raising money for programmes that can help hundreds or thousands of people.

These are all forms of giving and fundraising. Yet much of it still happens through informal networks, bank transfers, social media posts, WhatsApp groups, spreadsheets, and word of mouth. These methods work to a point. They are part of how we have always supported one another. But they become hard to manage when the money grows, more people get involved, or donors need more trust about where their money goes.

This is where the infrastructure gap becomes important.

What happens to the money after we give?

When someone gives money, we want to know some basic things.

Who is getting it? For an organisation, this might mean checking if it is legitimate, what it does, and what work it has done before. For an individual, it might mean knowing who they are raising money for and why.

What is the money being raised for? A fundraiser needs to clearly say its purpose, whether it is for medical bills, helping a family after a disaster, financing a community project, or funding a programme.

What happens after people give? For an individual, this could mean tracking how much has been raised and keeping supporters updated. For an organisation, it could involve managing a project, tracking spending, reporting to donors, and keeping records of work done.

And what happens because of it? This is important, especially when giving gets bigger or more organised. Donors want to know whether a project was completed, who benefited, and what their money helped achieve. These questions differ depending on who is raising the money, but the need is the same: trust, transparency, and a reliable way to share information alongside money.

Today, those pieces are often scattered.

This fragmentation has another issue we don’t talk about enough. Every fundraiser and every organisation creates information. Who raised money? Who contributed? What was the money for? What was spent? What project was completed? Who benefited? What challenges came up?

But much of this information disappears once the fundraiser ends or the project is done. A person may raise money for a cause but the next time they need to raise funds, they are starting from scratch. An organisation may spend years doing valuable work, but information about that work can stay buried in reports, emails, spreadsheets, and social media posts.

In these cases, a donor or funder may then have to start getting to know that person or organisation all over again. Good infrastructure should make the second interaction easier than the first. The information from past giving should help build trust for future giving. That is one of the strengths of financial infrastructure. We don’t need to start over every time money moves.

There is a useful comparison in payment evolution. Today, we can transfer money between banks, businesses, and individuals without creating a new payment system for every transaction. The infrastructure connecting these actors is mostly invisible to us. We just make a payment and expect it to work. Giving needs that same kind of infrastructure. Not because giving should become impersonal or transactional. Quite the opposite. Our giving is deeply personal. It is often based on relationships and community. But technology can make giving easier.

A person should be able to create a fundraiser, share it with friends and family, receive contributions, and keep supporters updated without using several different tools. An organisation should be able to raise money, manage projects, show its work, and build a history that future supporters can understand. And people who want to give should have better ways to find causes, know who they are supporting, and see what happens after they give.

This is how our thinking about Giveday has changed. Giveday is not just a place for organisations to raise money. Individuals can also create fundraisers for themselves, others, community causes, and projects they care about. That matters because giving doesn’t only happen through registered organisations.

Sometimes it is one person helping another, a community supporting one of its own, or a group coming together to solve a problem that nobody else is addressing. And sometimes it is an organisation running a programme that needs ongoing support. All these forms of giving are important.

The chance is to build systems that can support them without losing the human connections that make them work. For us, that means making fundraising easier, creating better ways for people to find and support causes, improving trust around who is raising money, and gradually building the tools that allow organisations and fundraisers to manage their work and communicate with supporters. The aim is not to replace how Africans already give. It is to make those ways work better. Giveday provides that gateway.