Remittances Worth Up To 100 Billion Dollars Go Uncounted As Giving
At the launch of Alliance magazine's 30th-anniversary book, Giving Through Time, hosted by editor Elaine Stabler, Higherlife Foundation co-founder Tsitsi Masiyiwa argued that remittances totalling between 90 and 100 billion dollars a year in Sub-Saharan Africa, three times the level of Foreign Direct Investment, are rarely recognised as philanthropy because Western definitions control the narrative.
Masiyiwa described funders arriving in a community with a rigid three-to-five-year agenda, then switching abruptly to the next trendy cause and leaving communities in the lurch. Dr Shonali Banerjee of the University of Warwick recalled an African Philanthropy Conference in Cairo where, after the collapse of USAID operations, local organisations spoke of an anvil of foreign funding finally dropping.
Source: Alliance Magazine · September 28, 2026