IN this article, Nabila Okino, Co-founder and CEO of Giveday Technology, explores how Africa can better harness its culture of generosity through stronger digital infrastructure. Drawing on the evolution of financial infrastructure, she argues that philanthropy also needs the connective rails to make giving more trusted, accessible and impactful.
Africa is a generous continent.
We give to family members, neighbours, religious institutions, community projects, emergencies and causes we care about. We contribute when someone falls ill, when a family loses a loved one, when a community is affected by flooding, when a child needs help with school fees, or when a group is trying to build something that will benefit others.
We have always found ways to help one another. But while the way we give has changed, the systems that support giving have not changed nearly as much. That is the gap we should be paying more attention to.
A few years ago, I experienced this firsthand. Severe flooding had affected parts of Kogi State, and I wanted to help raise money for people who had been displaced. The intention was to find a credible organisation or group on the ground, raise money from people who wanted to help, and get it where it was needed. In practice, it was not that straightforward.
It was difficult to identify who was actually doing the work on the ground. Information about different organisations and initiatives was limited. It wasn’t always clear who could be trusted, how contributions would be managed, or what would happen after the money was sent. What struck me was that the problem wasn’t a lack of generosity. People actually wanted to help. The problem was connecting that willingness to give with the people and causes that needed the support.
That experience eventually led to the idea for Giveday. At first, we thought we were solving a fundraising problem: how to make it easier for people to raise money and for others to contribute. But the more people we spoke to, the clearer it became that fundraising was only one part of a much larger problem.
We already give. We just don’t always have the systems to support it.
Think about how much giving happens outside formal philanthropy.
A group of friends can come together to raise money for a colleague whose house has burnt down. A family can raise money for medical treatment. A community can collect contributions to repair a road or support a school. Someone can organise a fundraiser for flood victims. A young person can raise money to start a community project. Then there are charities, NGOs and other organisations raising money for programmes that may support hundreds or thousands of people.
All of these are 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 difficult to manage when the amount of money grows, more people get involved, or donors need more confidence about where their money is going.
This is where the infrastructure gap becomes important.
What happens to the money after we give?
When someone gives money, we naturally want some basic questions answered.
Who is receiving it? For an organisation, this might mean knowing whether it is legitimate, what it does and what work it has previously undertaken. For an individual fundraiser, it might mean understanding who they are raising money for and why.
What is the money being raised for? A fundraiser needs to communicate its purpose clearly, whether it is supporting a medical bill, helping a family after a disaster, financing a community project or funding an organisation’s programme.
What happens after people contribute? For an individual, this could mean tracking how much has been raised and updating supporters. For an organisation, it could involve managing a project, tracking expenditure, reporting to donors and keeping records of the work being done.
And what happens as a result? This matters particularly when giving becomes larger or more organised. Donors want to know whether a project was completed, who benefited and what their contribution helped make possible. These questions apply differently depending on who is raising the money, but the underlying need is the same: trust, transparency and a reliable way to move information alongside money.
Today, those pieces are often scattered.
The Information Problem
This fragmentation has another consequence we don’t talk about enough. Every fundraiser and every organisation generates 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 completed. A person may successfully raise money for a cause, but the next time they need to raise money, they are effectively starting again. An organisation may spend years doing valuable work, but information about that work can remain buried in reports, emails, spreadsheets and social media posts.
In these cases, a donor or funder may then have to start the process of getting to know that person or organisation all over again. Good infrastructure should make the second interaction easier than the first. The information created through previous giving should help establish trust for future giving. That is one of the things that make financial infrastructure so powerful. We don’t need to reinvent the system every time money moves.
What Payments Did For Commerce
There is a useful comparison in the evolution of payments. Today, we can transfer money between banks, businesses, and individuals without creating a new payment system for every transaction. The infrastructure connecting these different actors is largely invisible to us. We simply make a payment and expect it to work. Giving needs some of that same connective infrastructure. Not because giving should become impersonal or transactional. Quite the opposite. Our giving is deeply personal. It is often built around relationships and community. But technology can make the process of giving easier.
A person should be able to create a fundraiser, share it with friends and family, receive contributions, and keep supporters updated without piecing together several different tools. An organisation should be able to raise money, manage projects, demonstrate its work, and build a history that future supporters can understand. And people who want to give should have better ways to discover causes, understand who they are supporting, and follow what happens after their contribution.
Building The Infrastructure Around Giving
This is how our thinking about Giveday has evolved. Giveday is not only a place for organisations to raise money. Individuals can also create fundraisers for themselves, for others, for community causes, and for projects they care about. That matters because philanthropy doesn’t happen only through registered organisations.
Sometimes it is one person helping another, a community helping one of its own or a group of people coming together to solve a problem that nobody else is solving. And sometimes it is an organisation running a programme that needs sustained support. All of these forms of giving are important.
The opportunity is to build systems that can support them without losing the human relationships that make them work. For us, that means making fundraising easier, creating better ways for people to discover 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 their supporters. The goal is not to replace the ways Africans already give. It is to make those ways work better. Giveday provides that gateway.
- Okino is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Giveday Technology Limited. She previously served as a Policy Analyst at the Central Bank of Nigeria and brings extensive experience in government relations, policy development and strategic advisory. She can be reached via nabila@mygiveday.com.