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Niamani Mutima has been the executive director of the Africa Grantmakers’ Affinity Group (AGAG) since 2001. That same year the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation started making grants to the non-governmental organization through its Civil Society program. To date, Mott has provided AGAG with support totaling $295,000. This transcript comes from an interview in which Mutima discusses grantmaking in Africa — the challenges, opportunities and role for funders on the continent. Watch a video of the interview below. 

NM: Africa is important. Number one, it is a large continent and it’s also a resource in terms of a lot of materials. But more importantly, number two, African communities are creative, vibrant communities and we now live in a global community. So what happens in Kinshasa [capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo] does affect what happens in Kansas. Not only in terms of health issues but also in terms of trade issues. Funders should be concerned about Africa because Africa is a part of the global community and we want to be good global citizens. The solutions that work for rural communities in Africa can also work for rural communities in other parts of the world.

One of the very important roles that African grantmakers have is to demystify Africa. By demystifying Africa, I mean to help people understand the context. For example, if you are talking about communications and media, you have to be aware that there are countries that have low-band-width capacity so you have to take that into consideration when you are using media that you want them to access.

The thing that makes AGAG unique and challenging and exciting is that you have grantmakers who are funding in various interest areas and in various parts of Africa, yet they are all knitted together by wanting to be better grantmakers. But the diversity of Africa, the complexity of approaches and all the different types of funders — private funders, donor-advised funds, individual funders — make the way they approach their work different. But there is a commonality. The challenge is to find the commonality and to find that connection with their grantees. That is so hard because most [grantmakers] who are funding in Africa don’t have a [physical] presence in Africa.

In looking back over the last 10 years, we looked at what we had accomplished and whether we felt that we were close to our mission; whether we had achieved our vision and whether or not we were on track. We feel that we are. We feel that having a space for funders in Africa is really important. [See related Mott article about AGAG.]

Looking to the future, we feel it is important to do two things. One, to try to make the experiences of funding in Africa more accessible to the [philanthropy] field, and two, to try to also strengthen the relationship that the field has with civil society organizations. We want to strengthen that partnership because the knowledge is actually in the civil society organizations that are doing the work.

We hope to find ways to use the knowledge and expertise that civil society has to inform grantmakers’ practices. So the feedback loop also strengthens the relationship between philanthropy and the organizations they support.