The essay opens against a stark backdrop: official development assistance fell by 23.1 per cent in 2025, the largest annual drop the OECD has ever recorded, with US aid alone down 56.9 per cent and further declines expected in 2026. In boardrooms across Lagos, Nairobi and Accra, the author notes, a familiar prescription keeps arriving — turn to social enterprise to absorb the work that donors are abandoning.
The piece interrogates that prescription rather than accepting it. It traces the contested definitions of social enterprise — organisations that trade for a social mission, reinvest surplus toward purpose, and blend commercial discipline with public benefit — and asks which of these definitions actually holds up when the funding environment turns hostile. The author argues that the term is often used loosely, sometimes as a rebranding exercise for conventional business and sometimes as a genuine governance commitment.
The essay also examines the practical tensions social enterprises face on the continent: pressure to demonstrate commercial viability to investors while serving communities that cannot pay market rates, and the risk that mission drifts when growth capital demands returns. It questions whether social enterprise can realistically substitute for the scale of lost aid, and suggests the model works best as one instrument among several rather than a wholesale replacement for public and philanthropic funding.