Philanthropy and Social Protection in COVID-19 Pandemic Times in Kenya and South Africa

1 Introduction

Applying a comparative qualitative case study approach, this study sheds light on giving trends and functioning of philanthropic responses towards social protection needs in Africa by focusing on two government-initiated funds for COVID-19 response in Kenya and South Africa. These are the Kenya COVID-19 Response Fund and the South African Solidarity Fund. An additional focus is on the drivers and motivations of philanthropic responses to COVID-19 in both countries, as well as the implications of the two cases on similar initiatives in meeting social protection in times of crisis.

When COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic in March 2020, predictions about its potential effects in Africa were all gloom, especially due to its high disease burden, decaying public health systems, and weak social protection programmes. However, even with poor disease surveillance and treatment capacity, Africa seems to have been spared the severity witnessed in some parts of developed economies. Arguably, as will be discussed in greater detail later, this is an outcome of African states invoking long-established traditions of collectivist mutual aid systems (such as Ubuntu and Harambee) in mobilizing resources to respond to the pandemic. This is not to argue that Africa did not suffer the massive effects of the pandemic. Indeed, across Africa, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in major social welfare challenges, economic lockdowns placed livelihoods at risk, and people slipped into poverty with narrow options for recovery (Moses and Woolard 2023). In South Africa for example, 2.2 million jobs were lost between the first and second quarters of 2020, pushing the country’s unemployment rates from 39 % to 42 % (Devereux 2021). A further 1.5 million employees were furloughed with 40 % of these never getting their jobs back even after the economy re-opened (Devereux 2021, 437). Women, manual workers, and the poor were significantly more likely to lose their jobs than men, professionals, and the non-poor (Devereux 2021). In Kenya the economy contracted by 1–1.5 % in 2020, resulting in losses of jobs and livelihoods, and eroding progress in poverty reduction (World Bank 2020).

Similar distress conditions have historically inspired a variety of solidaristic philanthropic interventions across the continent and beyond (Fowler and Mati 2019; Mati 2017; Mati 2020). In the COVID-19 context, philanthropic interventions came in multiple forms aimed at mobilising resources for the purchase of medical resources as well as social protection i.e. “to help avert poverty (‘insurance’) or to improve the plight of the poor (‘assistance’)” (Metz 2016, 134) through humanitarian relief, and to improve the resilience of vulnerable groups.

While most countries with more developed social welfare systems shouldered the burden of financing social protection programmes at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, 27 African countries (including Kenya and South Africa – the focus of the current paper), established special purpose public-private philanthropy institutions to mobilise resources to fund both public health systems and social protection assistance to severely affected citizens (Rahim et al. 2020). These were the South African National COVID-19 Solidarity Fund (hereafter Solidarity Fund) and the Kenya COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund respectively.

The two funds were government-initiated. In both countries, respective presidents appointed highly regarded members of the business community to steer the funds voluntarily. In the case of South Africa, the Solidarity Fund was chaired by Gloria Serobe a distinguished business leader and founder of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed Women Investment Portfolio Holdings. In Kenya, Jane Karuku, the Managing Director of East African Breweries was appointed chair of the board of the fund. In both cases, in addition to private sector leaders, governments had their representatives on the steering board. These institutional arrangements were attractive to private donors and had a capacity-enhancing effect on public sector institutions, even while remaining susceptible to corruption.

Framed as a necessity to consolidate and coordinate COVID-19 response initiatives (Rahim et al. 2020), two reasons account for the establishment of these institutions. First was state’s incapacity to fund COVID-19 response interventions due to widening fiscal deficits occasioning lockdowns of the economy. In Kenya for example, the fiscal deficit “widened to 8.2 % of GDP, up from the pre-COVID budgeted target of 6.0 % of GDP, and the debt to GDP ratio to 65.6 % of GDP as of June 2020 (from 62.4 % of GDP in June 2019)” (World Bank 2020, v). Second, majority of Africans lack formal labour market-based social protection due to high unemployment and informality (Devereux 2021, 422).

In some preliminary analysis of past large-scale African philanthropic mobilisations to respond to humanitarian disasters on the continent, Mati (2023), identifies three broad categories summarised in Table 1 below. First (the focus of the current study) are hybrid responses encompassing an interplay of private and public actors in resource mobilisation. Second are multi-actor and multi-scale hybrids encompassing multiple governments and private agencies located and coordinated by inter-governmental agencies, especially at the African Union level. The result of these hybrids is “a blurry conflation of the borders of statutory government obligations to citizens, with the non-statutory premise of voluntary agency of philanthropy” (Mati 2023, 10). The final category is mobilisations firmly located within private philanthropic initiatives.

2 Study Problem

While studies on philanthropic mobilisations and sectoral partnerships against COVID-19 exist, the focus has been on the nature and effects of partnerships between the state and the nonprofit sector (see for example, Harris 2021; Jeong and Sung-Ju 2021; Kövér 2021; Meyer et al. 2021). In addition, while research on state social protection measures during the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa exists (see for example Devereux 2021; Strupat 2022), attention has not been paid to probing giving trends, drivers and motivations of philanthropic behaviour, as well as the performance of these hybrid funds. This paper attempts to address these gaps in addition to probing the effectiveness of these kinds of institutional arrangements in resource mobilisations to address social protection needs in Kenya and South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the two cases are useful for probing the accountability of such efforts.

Given the foregoing, this study sought to answer questions regarding giving trends, utilisation, and functioning of these responses towards social protection needs during the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya and South Africa. Additional questions include, first, what were the drivers and motivations of the philanthropic responses in both countries? Second, how responsive were these two funds especially to those whose vulnerabilities were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic? Last but not least, what are the public perceptions on the functioning and accountability of these responses towards meeting social protection needs during the COVID-19 pandemic in both countries? Additionally, the paper reflects on the implications of the two cases in informing the design and operations of similar initiatives in meeting sbocial protection needs in times of crisis.

Having laid the background, the remainder of the paper first clarifies what is meant by ‘social protection’ and ‘philanthropy’. Thereafter, it delves into the methodology, followed by a presentation and analysis of findings, and finally the conclusion.

3 Social Protection in African Contexts

Due to its variegated history, ideological orientations, and multiplicity of meanings and practices, social protection is a slippery concept (Aina 2004). Existing conceptions fall under at least three categories with varying “roles and use of social provisioning, social regulation, and social distribution in ‘fighting, alleviating, reducing, or eliminating’ poverty” (Aina 2004, 6). Embedded in ‘traditional’ welfare capitalism, the first conception sees social protection as entailing a “range of public institutions, norms and programmes aimed at protecting workers and their households from contingencies threatening basic living standards” (Barrientos 2010, 1). The emphasis in this conception is on “income maintenance and on protecting living standards for all (but especially workers)” (Barrientos 2010, 1). Termed ‘social insurance’, social protection here mainly targets those in formal employment, and is therefore, by its very nature, exclusionary (Devereux 2021).

A second conception especially prevalent in contexts of socioeconomic crises fuelled by structural adjustments and globalization pressures in countries with less developed social welfare systems, sees social protection as policy frameworks for addressing “levels of vulnerability, risk, and deprivation deemed socially unacceptable within a given polity or society” (Conway et al. 2000, 2). Specifically, social protection in these contexts entails “public interventions to (i) assist individuals, households, and communities better manage risk, and (ii) provide support to the critically poor” (Holzmann and Jorgensen 2001, 530).

The two conceptions above, owe their contextual relevance to welfare states and privileged public institutions and actions in the delivery of social protection (Esping-Andersen 1990). Such a state-centric analysis reveals both similarities and differences in Kenya and South African social protection programmes. Convergences include their racialised colonial state origins that left means-testing (residual) social and spatial exclusivity imprints in their design, as well as their contemporary embedding in the constitutions of the respective countries (Strupat 2022). On specifics, South Africa’s 1996 Constitution entitles all citizens to state-provided social security. It has the most extensive system of social assistance in Sub-Saharan Africa (Moses and Woolard 2023), designed to respond to “the country’s extremely high levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality” (Devereux 2021, 438). South African social assistance programmes include social pensions first introduced in the 1920s for the White population only, the Child Support Grant introduced in 1998, and a host of other pro-poor social grants that offer “unconditional cash transfers to 17 million people every month” (Devereux 2021, 438).

Kenya’s social protection programme has been on an upward trajectory since the 2010 Constitution laid a constitutional framework for a modicum of rights and entitlements for most vulnerable citizens (Strupat 2022). Article 43 of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of Kenya (2010) asserts the right of every citizen to social security and protection (including healthcare, human dignity, and reasonable working conditions) and binds the state to provide the same to all vulnerable persons and their dependents. This notwithstanding, Kenyan social protection programme is structured along three main pillars: social assistance, social security and health insurance (Government of Kenya 2017 cited in Strupat 2022, 9), and is heavily skewed in favour of those in formal sector employment. For example, only a paltry 3 % of informal workers are covered by social insurance, while only 7.7 million out of over 50 million Kenyans have health insurance (KNBS 2019). However, there has been some progress in Kenya’s social protection policy with new cash transfer programmes under the National Safety Net Programme and the Hunger Safety Net Programme which were started in 2016, collectively reaching 1.23 million households across the country (Doyle and Ikutwa 2021; Strupat 2022).

The obvious limitations in reach and coverage of state-centric social protection have led to the emergence of a third model that highlights the important role of both state and non-state actors especially in Africa (Aina 2004). Here, scholars such as Metz (2016, 134–5), argue that social protection “involves the state but … it would also plausibly count as social protection if private agents or NGOs undertook actions expected to help the poor, but the state monitored the extent to which they did and were prepared to step in if they did not do so adequately.” Given this, the actually existing social protection in African contexts is a hybrid “product of several strands of social policy, from European social security systems to humanitarian relief interventions” (Devereux 2013, 13), informal mutual aid practices (Aina 2004), philanthropy (Gimode 2004), and other non-state-centric welfare practices. The result of this hybridity is that social protection practices in Africa also operate and are embedded in the ubiquitous ‘economy of affection’ expressed as Ubuntu in Southern Africa (Metz 2016) and Harambee in Kenya (Wanyonyi 2004).^[1]

One attempt at theorization of the role of ‘economy of affection’ in social protection practices in Africa is provided by Metz (2016, 137) who argues that Ubuntu’s communal relational salience is the foundational feature of moral solidarity across Africa. Specifically, the common Ubuntu maxim of ‘I am because we are’ and ‘a person is a person through other persons’, means that individuals prize communal well-being, especially of those with whom one has some affinities (Metz 2016, 137). For Metz (2016, 138), this suggests two distinct relational themes: identity –a matter of considering oneself part of the whole, being close, sharing a way of life, belonging and integrating with others; and solidarity – aimed at achieving the good of all, being sympathetic, acting for the common good, serving others and being concerned for others’ welfare. For Metz (2016, 139), these are the foundations for Ubuntu-centered social protection in Africa. In these arrangements, “the state itself identifies with and exhibits solidarity towards its residents, as well as enables them to do so with themselves” (Metz 2016, 139). In effect, African traditional solidaristic pro-social relational practices have been appropriated by the state in mobilising resources for social protection (cf. Wanyonyi 2004 for Harambee in post-colonial Kenya).

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the many such instances of state’s appropriation of these neo-traditional practices of Ubuntu and Harambee in resource mobilisation for social protection in humanitarian crisis contexts. Social protection in this context means “all programs executed to achieve multiple objectives such as fighting poverty and hunger and increasing the resilience of the poor and vulnerable groups towards various shocks” (Abdoul-Azize and El Gamil 2020, 1). While this conception is silent on who the primary agent in social protection is, for this study, these include public and private actors that “provide income or consumption transfers to the poor, protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks, and enhance the social status and rights of the marginalised” (Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler 2004, 1).

4 Methodology

The study employed a comparative qualitative case study approach. Specific methods involved collecting data through document analysis and in-depth interviews. The first step involved gathering data through content analysis of documents from the Solidarity Fund and Kenya COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund websites.^[3] Additional data on giving trends towards COVID-19 responses in Kenya and South Africa was sought from media reports. Media reports also helped with the identification of organisations that were later targeted for interviews. Subsequent interviews aimed at answering questions on drivers and motivations for philanthropic behaviour, and the functionality of these funds in meeting social protection needs in both countries. The specific questions asked to different participants are highlighted as required in the findings section.

A total of 30 in-depth interviews were conducted in Kenya (15) and South Africa (15) between October 2021 and October 2022 with actors with knowledge and experience on the operations of these funds. Specifically, 11 individuals from nonprofits and philanthropy organisations were interviewed in Kenya and a further four were from recipients of social assistance grants. In South Africa, nine individuals representing organisations, and six individual recipients of social assistance grants were interviewed.

Two different interview guides were used; one for individuals representing organisations (with questions pursuing both individual and organisational experiences and perspectives) and a second one for respondents who were beneficiaries (as individuals or organisations). It needs to be noted that there were overlapping roles for nonprofit organisations as these were involved in resource mobilisation for their operational responses to the pandemic (and therefore were recipients of grants from these funds as well as other peoples’ and institutions’ generosity). Nonprofit organisations were also important conduits for the distribution of welfare benefits to vulnerable populations, and therefore, were ‘givers’ in this regard. In short, they were both recipients as well as infrastructures for resource mobilisation against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Interviews were conducted using online meeting platforms (Zoom and MS Teams) as well as face-to-face. Convenience sampling was used in targeting respondents who included leaders (CEOs and programme managers) in various philanthropy and nonprofit organisations, as well as individual recipients of social security grants. Interviewees were identified through media reports, the researchers’ knowledge of organisations involved in the COVID-19 pandemic response, and referrals (snowballing) from other respondents.

Data from interviews was transcribed. These transcripts, together with reviewed documents, were analysed using thematic content analysis following Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-step process involving first, familiarisation with the data through a detailed reading of the transcripts, field notes, and documents. This was followed by coding through systematic labelling and categorising segments of the data representing trends of giving, the drivers and motivations of philanthropic behaviour, trends in utilisations and functioning of the funds, and their impacts and effectiveness in meeting social protection needs. This was followed by a search for patterns and themes within the data. Next was a review of themes emerging from the initial three steps to ensure internal coherence. This was followed by definitions of clear boundaries for each of the themes as well as identification of illustrative excerpts from data. The final step was the writing up of the results of the analysis.

5 Findings and Discussion

This section presents the findings of this analysis by first highlighting trends in giving to both funds. Results show that corporate entities gave the largest donations, suggesting their acceptability of these institutional arrangements, but also that African corporates are heavily influenced by “strong community mentality and the ‘Ubuntu’ philosophy instilled in African societies” and therefore care about their communities and nations (Muthuri and Gilbert 2011, 479). Additionally, there were multiple forms of giving–monetary, volunteering, and in-kind-affirming that African philanthropy takes multiple forms (Mati 2017).

In the next section, we argue that consistent with previous research, social-economic vulnerabilities occasioning the pandemic, and individual agency, were both drivers and motivations for philanthropic actions. Following this, an analysis of trends in the utilisation of resources mobilised by the two funds demonstrates the utility of these institutional arrangements. Here, the Solidarity Fund is spotlighted as arguably recording better results (compared to Kenya’s COVID-19 Response Fund), arising from a deliberate attempt to address accountability and transparency challenges that had earlier pockmarked operations. The implications of these findings, as shown in the next section is that countries desirous of similar institutions should endeavour for a design that ensures public accountability and greater transparency.

Before delving into the findings, it is important to note that this case study approach has several limitations. First, given the number of such institutions across Africa, we do not aim for generalizability but rather, to shed light on these types of funds through an in-depth gaze into the various elements of these two cases. Second, the two cases were chosen purely on account of convenience for the researcher. They are therefore in no way representative of similar funds across Africa. Third, the subjective nature of the study due to its reliance on qualitative data comes laden with researchers’ subjective interpretations and attendant difficulties in proving cause and effect.

6 Trends in Giving Towards COVID-19 Response Funds in South Africa and Kenya

This section presents an analysis of giving trends towards the two funds. Data for this theme was gathered from the Solidarity Fund and Kenya COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund websites as well as media reports. Additional data was sought from interviewees on their experiences on the role of philanthropy during this pandemic. Data reveals that the setting up of these funds triggered an outpouring of donations from public institutions, foundations and nonprofits, private companies, and individuals pointing to an initial acceptability of these institutions in both countries. Table 2 below presents comparative data on donor types and the proportion of their contributions.

In South Africa, within three months the Solidarity Fund received over US$186 million in contributions. Corporate institutions, foundations, and trusts were the largest segment of donors, collectively giving over 84.58 % of total donations. 75 large corporations (in mining, banking, fintech and telecommunications) and private philanthropies are listed as official supporting organisations and strategic partners on the Solidarity Fund website. The largest donor was Mary Oppenheimer & Daughters who contributed an equivalent of US$57.9 million followed Naspers’s US$29.9 million donation. Among philanthropic organisations, Elma South Africa Foundation was the largest donor, with over US$14.4 million, while Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) (a political party) was the largest donor in the payroll giving category donating US$796,887 to the fund (Solidarity Fund 2023).

In less than a month after its establishment, the Kenyan COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund had received over US$12 million (Mutinda 2020). Similar to South Africa, the biggest donors were corporate entities (especially banks, insurance, manufacturing companies, and telecommunications) and private sector foundations who contributed 80.67 % of the total donations. The largest donor was Safaricom who donated an equivalent of US$2 million, followed by the Kenya Commercial Bank Group and Media Owners Association with US$1.5 million each.^[4]

There were at least three forms of giving – monetary, volunteering, and in-kind – in both countries. Media and telecommunications companies in both countries, for example, donated airtime and space that went towards tackling disinformation to curb the spread of the virus. In Kenya for example, 15 media houses through Media Owners Association donated advertising space and airtime worth US$100,000 each, bringing their total contribution to US$1.5 million (Mutinda 2020). In addition to its cash donation, the Eastern African telecommunications giant, Safaricom, gave three months of internet bundles and airtime to healthcare workers as well as US$100,000 worth of thermal scanners which helped in expanding screening capabilities (Mutinda 2020).

In both countries, other types of in-kind donations included direct medical supplies such as syringes, infusion pumps, oxygen, beds blankets, and PPEs that included hand sanitisers, surgical gloves, visor face protectors, and surgical face masks (Solidarity Fund 2020). The combination of monetary, in-kind donations, and volunteering (including by members of the board of these funds who served on a pro-bono basis), is consistent with African giving traditions (Mati 2017). In this regard, Solidarity Fund (2023, 4) for instance notes that in the first months of the Fund establishment, “a large number of volunteers worked tirelessly, donating their skills and commitment to finalising the Fund’s structure and establishing its subcommittees, operations, governance, and controls.” This multidimensional nature of African philanthropy and its multifaceted role in humanitarian crisis is reflected in the words of the CEO of Callas Foundation, in her response to the question, what role did philanthropy play? She argued:

Philanthropy is not just about money or being rich … Offering your time, availing yourself, giving someone water or food … that’s philanthropy; being there, listening to those sad stories and offering hope to them, that’s philanthropy (interview 24/03/2022).

Similarly, the interviewee from BackaBuddy (interview 29/03/2022) indicated:

Philanthropy doesn’t necessarily always have to be money. It can be doing a good deed, or it can be any charitable acts that help other people … for example, even though we have campaigns on BackaBuddy that raise funds, you will sometimes find people who would want to make direct contact with the beneficiary asking for money, and donate something else [in-kind] instead.

Additionally, these giving trends affirm previous observations that in Africa none is too poor to give (Mati 2017). In this regard the poor engage in mutualistic social protection practices anchored in economies of affection, while the rich, either as individuals or businesses they own or lead, support the less fortunate (Fowler and Mati 2019). This is illustrated, for example, by the CEO of Callas Foundation (interview 24/03/2022) saying: “During the pandemic … we saw that philanthropic work can be done even by those categorised as the poor; we saw them extending their hands to assist those who had absolutely nothing.” This observation is further amplified by the size of contributions made through the BackaBuddy crowdfunding platform where “charities and individuals set up campaigns … to raise funds for … people affected by COVID-19” (interview 29/03/2022) with donations ranging from just a few dollars, suggesting affordability by individuals from various socioeconomic groups. An example is the campaign by Izwi Domestic Workers Alliance which raised US$18,342.7 in donations ranging from US$12.7 to US$2,545.7 towards supporting domestic workers who had lost their jobs.^[5]

These observations have implications for the practice of philanthropy and social protection in both crisis and non-crisis contexts in Africa. Specifically, it is possible to harness these giving behaviours (labelled as “less than a dollar philanthropy” (Mati 2023)) to effectively raise resources towards social protection in similar humanitarian contexts. We contend that private sector actors, working collectively with the state, civil society and collectivistic welfare traditions (Ubuntu and Harambee) in these countries can borrow experiences from the establishment of the Scandinavian welfare system through a social compact between autonomous collectives of classes, people and corporate bodies (Strandberg 2006) in crafting an African-centred social protection system. As argued earlier, these institutional arrangements have become quite common in dealing with Africa’s humanitarian crisis contexts on a need basis. An exploration of making them a permanent feature through Scandinavian-type social pacts can greatly benefit the continent. As the CEO of the East African Philanthropy Network (EAPN) indicated: “This pandemic is teaching us many lessons; we need to come together to set up systems for mobilizing resources to attend to our needs” (interview 12/01/2022). Following Metz (2016), we argue that through such arrangements, the state acts in solidarity with its citizens as well as enables other actors to do so.

7 Utilisations and Functioning of Philanthropic Social Protection Responses

This section attempts to answer questions regarding the utilisation and functioning of these funds with a specific focus on the nature and types of beneficiaries, as well as how well these funds functioned in both countries. Our data suggests at least two broad categories of beneficiaries of resources mobilised by these funds: individual and institutional. In what follows, we explain the various categories of institutional and individual beneficiaries and their links to social protection. It needs to be noted that, unlike South Africa’s Solidarity Fund, data on expenditures of the COVID-19 Response Fund in Kenya is not comprehensively available as the Fund’s website was pulled down after widespread reportage of corruption in the media, further fuelling the perception that the Kenyan Fund was very opaque in its operations (Ngule, interview 24/02/2022). Therefore, we relied on secondary data and interviews for Kenya. However, a complete reconstruction of Kenyan data on utilisation was not possible, therefore limiting the comparability of this element of the study between the two countries.

8 Impacts and Effectiveness on Social Protection Needs

The last question addressed is how citizens perceived the impacts and effectiveness of these funds. Findings are consistent with previous studies that suggest that on the whole, these funds were useful in both countries in helping the state respond to social protection needs in ways that eased livelihood shocks (Devereux 2021; Doyle and Ikutwa 2021; Moses and Woolard 2023; Strupat 2022). Importantly, in both countries, respondents felt that infections and deaths were minimized through enhanced capacity for disease surveillance and immunization.^[8] However, interviewees in both countries held that the effectiveness of these funds was compromised by allegations of corrupt practices in the management and utilisation of these funds (Moche 2020; Oketch and Ngugi 2022).

In the Kenyan case, the CEO of EAPN indicated that there were “issues of corruption … accountability and transparency in the management of resources” (interview, interview 12/01/2022). Keshavjee, another Kenyan interviewee, indicated: “It’s very upsetting that people were hiving off funds in their pockets” (interview, 07/09/2022). Similarly in the South African case, the CEO of Callas Foundation (interview 24/03/2022), indicated: “A lot of corruption happened there [in Solidarity Fund], people saw a huge opportunity to become one-day millionaires and billionaires.” It is no wonder then that these allegations of corruption ultimately led to the death of the Kenyan fund, while South Africa had some corrective actions on governance and transparency, in the face of sustained pressure from civil society (Corruption Watch 2020).

The pertinent question is what made these funds susceptible to corruption, and why was Solidarity Fund able to redeem itself, while the Kenyan fund died? Evidence points to a culture of elite looting from the public purse in both countries. Remedial actions in South Africa which ensured a different outcome for the Solidarity Fund are traceable to the differences in institutional arrangements between the two funds. These are summarised in Table 3 below. Specifically, while both funds were established through Presidential Decrees, and embody a public-private philanthropic partnership, their similarities end there.

In South Africa, in his March 23 2020 announcement of the formation of an independent Solidarity Fund, President Ramaphosa also invited the business community for assistance in getting the Fund operational. Thereafter, the Fund was registered as a public benefit organisation with an independent board accountable to the public (Solidarity Fund 2023). There was therefore a deliberate attempt to craft an agency with independent structures cushioned from political interference. This proved to be key to its turnaround on its accountability deficits. The Board utilised these arrangements to ensure better governance and accountability of the Solidarity Fund. This suggests that public accountability is key if such initiatives are to be successful.

In the Kenyan case, President Kenyatta announced the establishment of the COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund on March 30, 2020, and named a board comprising 10 members from the private sector (mainly from financial services and manufacturing sectors) and two government representations (The Minister of Interior and Coordination of National Security, and Chair of the Council of Governors). Unlike the South African case, the board was directly answerable to the president and no clarity was offered on important details such as “decision-making procedures, disclosure of information on the sources of funding and the details of disbursements, and the relationship of the fund’s operations with the budget” (Rahim et al. 2020, 8).

Given the foregoing, opinion is divided on the performance of both funds in their social protection role. Those who received support see them as responsive and effective, even while acknowledging that more could have been done. This is reflected, for example, in the words of the CEO of Cotlands Foundation who argued: “I think [Solidarity Fund’s] response was very good. Not everybody received assistance, but it happens … There were families that survived, even if for a few days with that funding” (interview 24/03/2022). The views of David (earlier cited) echo this, as do those of the other five individual recipients of the COVID-19 Social Distress Grant in South Africa that we interviewed. Similarly, in Kenya, the EAPN CEO (interview 12/01/2022) contends that while there were “cases of mismanagement of resources, the objectives of the Fund were met” and philanthropy was responsive in meeting social protection needs for the most vulnerable.

Notwithstanding these positive reviews, reports of corruption affected the philanthropic spirit and the effectiveness of these interventions in getting to the poorest of the poor as “[some] people in high positions took that money for their benefit” (Cotlands interview 15/03/2022). In addition, bureaucratic inefficiencies attributed to technological and administrative failures (Devereux 2021) resulted in delays and erratic disbursements of grants. For example, as highlighted earlier, the failure to embrace and work with NPOs, especially in the initial stages of operations, led to delays in the disbursement of distress grants. In South Africa for example, only 40 % of the budget for the COVID-19 Social Distress Grant was utilised by September 2020 (Bhorat and Köhler 2020).

The implication here is that to enhance efficiency and reach those in greatest need, initiatives like these should involve, early enough, all critical stakeholders in the design and delivery of responses. Importantly, governments must let these institutions work without political interference: “let the systems function without any interference and building public confidence, the confidence of donors and partners” (EAPN CEO, interview 12/01/2022).

9 Conclusions

This paper has shed light on giving trends, their motivations and drivers, utilisation, and functioning of philanthropic responses towards social protection needs in Kenya and South Africa by focusing on the COVID-19 Response Fund in Kenya and the Solidarity Fund in South Africa. Both funds demonstrate emergent forms of philanthropic-public partnership that are both compelling to African donors, potentially capacity-adding for the state, but also susceptible to issues of corruption. Specifically, these cases illustrate the role complementary between public institutions, philanthropy NPOs, and individuals in social protection in crises.

Both funds enabled a display of what one respondent observed as “philanthropy at its best” given the outpouring of support from various socioeconomic formations in both countries. Driven by individual emotive desires and a sense of obligation embedded in African prosociality and economies of affection practices of Ubuntu and Harambee, corporate institutions, foundations, and trusts contributed over 80% of all the resources in both countries. Some large donors, it has been shown, were drawn to these funds by the convergence of their interests with the objectives of the funds. The implication is that these kinds of initiatives need to invest in injecting clarity of goals and purpose in their mobilisations to better attract donors. Importantly, these funds enabled many people to perform acts of goodwill (including money and in-kind donations and volunteering) that ensured that hardships occasioning the pandemic were mitigated and the most vulnerable were taken care of.

However, these initiatives also demonstrate bureaucratic inefficiencies and are prone to corruption in their disbursement and usage of funds. Enhancing efficiency in reaching those in greatest need, requires early involvement of all critical stakeholders, especially NPOs closest to hard-to-reach beneficiaries in the design of such initiatives, which can also ensure greater transparency and accountability. At the same time, maximizing efficiency and reducing corruption, as the Solidarity Fund case suggests, requires designing such initiatives in a manner that insulates them from political interference, and with sound structures and clear accountabilities. This way, they can better help in bridging resource gaps to aid the state respond better to social protection burdens.