Brian Kagoro: Challenging power, financing liberation
Brian Kagoro managing director of Programs at the Open Society Foundations.
As the 6th East Africa Philanthropy Network (EAPN) Conference convenes in Cairo, Egypt, from July 27–31, anticipation is building around a keynote address by Brian Kagoro, lawyer, Pan-Africanist, and Director of the Open Society Foundations’ Africa Regional Office.
Known for his bold, unfiltered critique of global power dynamics and a fierce advocate for African self-determination, Kagoro is expected to push conversations on sustainable development far beyond traditional philanthropy.
A Voice that Disrupts, Not Consoles
The theme of this year’s conference, “Sustainable Financing for Development in the Majority World,” invites difficult questions about who defines sustainability and who controls financial flows in African development.
Few voices are better suited to interrogate this moment than Kagoro, who has consistently questioned donor-driven agendas and the paternalism embedded in aid architecture.
At the 2024 African Philanthropy Network Assembly in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, he declared:
“Decolonization is about dealing with the Black inferiority complex. An inferior person cannot create a superior program.”
This challenge resonates deeply with the Majority World—those often sidelined in global financing decisions. Kagoro has made it clear that liberation is not cosmetic.
It is intellectual, structural, and cultural. This is a message that sits uncomfortably in many global rooms, where the optics of inclusion have often replaced actual power-sharing. For Kagoro, transformation must begin from within.
Africans must interrogate not only who funds their development but also how they define and pursue it.
His thinking calls out the hidden curriculum of aid—the belief that Africans must mirror foreign systems to be effective, or must meet external criteria to be eligible for funding.
By naming the inferiority complex, Kagoro confronts the deeper psychological and epistemological legacies of colonization.
He is not merely concerned with financial self-reliance but with a larger intellectual sovereignty that African actors must reclaim.
Not a Footnote
A longtime critic of philanthropic models that sideline African voices, Kagoro will likely confront the power dynamics still shaping how African civil society is funded.
Speaking at the same APN Assembly in 2024, he noted:
“Part of the problem is very simple – we are beggars. We (Africans) have become a footnote in other people’s world.”
This framing strikes at the heart of the conference theme. While development actors talk of sustainability, many African institutions remain heavily dependent on foreign funding streams.
For Kagoro, this isn’t just a resource issue—it’s a sovereignty issue.
Expect him to urge funders and African leaders to move beyond the illusion of inclusion and toward true ownership of development priorities.
Kagoro’s critique of Africa-as-footnote demands an honest reckoning with the global philanthropic industry.
If African agency is to mean anything, it must involve rethinking whose goals are being served, whose values are centered, and whose timelines are followed.
His vision doesn’t stop at critique. It is also about activating African ecosystems that are grounded in local knowledge, solidarity, and historical consciousness.
The uncomfortable truth, as he lays it out, is that development financing has often been a tool of discipline, not empowerment. It has shaped not only what is possible but also what is thinkable. By rejecting the metaphor of African actors as passive recipients, Kagoro challenges everyone in the room to recalibrate their frameworks—not to simply include Africans, but to cede space, authority, and authorship.
Who Should Listen—and Why
Kagoro’s keynote is likely to resonate with African philanthropic institutions, community foundations, and local funders eager to shift from transactional giving to transformational change.
His message may also strike a nerve with international funders uncomfortable with hearing how their models reinforce dependency.
What makes Kagoro’s voice different is that he doesn’t stop at critique.
His call is for courage: to fund differently, to organize differently, to imagine African development outside the grammar of colonial leftovers.
The 6th EAPN Conference promises to be a space where financing meets vision. With Kagoro at the podium, it might also be a space where courage meets clarity
A Moment for Reflection and Redesign
With philanthropic institutions across the continent under pressure to localize resources, cede decision-making to grassroots actors, and invest in civic space resilience, the conference will be instrumental in getting clearer solutions.
The Cairo conference will gather hundreds of stakeholders—from private foundations and social enterprises to community-led networks and government actors—grappling with how to fund Africa’s future fairly.
Most speakers will not offer easy answers, but he will make clear what’s at stake.
Not just better grants.
Not just more African funders.
But the deeper question: Financing for what kind of future—and whose?
