By Ofovwe and Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, CFR, Co-Chairs of King's Trust International's Africa Advisory Board
Every act of giving begins, whether the giver knows it or not, with a theory of change. A quiet belief about how the world actually moves. Some give to relieve a symptom: the empty plate, the unpaid school fee, the absent roof. That work is both noble and necessary. But over the years, we have come to hold a different conviction: that the biggest and most durable change in Africa will not come from treating symptoms one at a time. It will come from the people we equip to repair the systems that produce them.
That conviction is the thread that runs through everything we do — through the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation, through our wider philanthropic ventures, and now through our work as Co-Chairs of The King’s Trust International Africa Advisory Board. We did not arrive at it by accident.
Our Unfashionable Bet
One of us spent a career in finance, helping to build Access Bank into one of Africa’s largest financial institutions, and learned a hard lesson in the process: you can build a great business, but it cannot rise sustainably above the quality of the society and institutions around it. If the state is weak, the ceiling will always be low.
The other spent a career across law, banking, and the social sector and encountered the same truth from a different vantage point: that the gap between Africa and many of the world’s most successful societies is rarely one of talent or ambition. More often, it is a question of institutional quality.
Much of the continent’s philanthropic energy is understandably directed towards providing immediate relief for people in need. We chose to plant our flag in the less fashionable territory of public-sector reform.
Our theory of change is deceptively simple, and it begins with people. If we equip public servants to become effective leaders with the technical competence to transform their institutions — and if we support them throughout their careers with an ecosystem of reform allies, rigorous evidence, and resources at the scale required to overcome the barriers to change — then those leaders can drive systemic improvements that reduce dependency and expand opportunity at scale.
Through the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation and our partnership with the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, we have invested in scholarships, fellowships, and a Public Leaders Programme that is helping to build a critical mass of reform-minded leaders within government. Our growing alumni network of public servants is approaching 500 strong, and we are relentlessly pursuing the goal of equipping thousands of public-sector reformers across Africa over the next decade.
This is not the work of a single grant or a single year. It is the patient and persistent work of changing how a continent governs itself — measured not in headlines, but in milestones, often a generation apart.
A study by KPMG titled “Disruptive Philanthropists”, to which we contributed our perspectives, found that nearly three-quarters of philanthropists now place measurable impact at the very top of their priorities when deciding where to give. We count ourselves firmly among them. Money matters, but money alone is perhaps the least interesting thing a philanthropist can offer. The most powerful combination is capital joined to time, expertise, influence, and conviction.
The discipline we each carried from the corporate world — our insistence on strategy, governance, and knowing whether things are actually working — has had to be adapted, not abandoned, for philanthropy. Chief among the disciplines we retained is a commitment to thinking systemically. We decided long ago that our role was not simply to distribute fish, but to help people learn how to fish. More importantly, we resolved never to treat any intervention in isolation. Lasting change comes from addressing the systems that produce outcomes, not merely the symptoms they create, even when systems are harder to influence, slower to reform, and less attractive to fund.
That approach demands patience. Unlike a business, where results can often be measured quarter by quarter, systemic change unfolds over years, sometimes decades. Not everything that matters can be neatly quantified, and some of the most consequential returns emerge long after the original investment has been made. Yet we believe that disciplined philanthropy requires both humility about what cannot be measured immediately and accountability for the progress that can. Holding those two ideas in balance has become one of the defining disciplines of our giving.
Africa’s Youth Need Our Attention
If our work on institutions is one end of the chain, Africa’s young people are the other.
More than six in ten Africans are under the age of twenty-five. That represents the largest concentration of youthful energy, creativity, and potential anywhere on earth — and the continent’s most urgent unfinished task.
This is why last year we were honoured to accept the role of Co-Chairs of The King’s Trust International Africa Advisory Board, succeeding Bernard and Genevieve Mensah, whose six years of leadership laid foundations we now have the privilege of building upon.
Since launching its work on the continent in 2016, The King’s Trust International has reached more than 30,000 young people across nine African countries, with the overwhelming majority securing employment, starting enterprises, or returning to education within months of completing its programmes. Education, employability, and entrepreneurship are the practical bridges between a young person’s potential and their livelihood.
We return, once again, to our theory of change.
Capable institutions create the conditions in which young people can thrive. Employed, skilled, and enterprising young people, in turn, give those institutions purpose and legitimacy. Both sides of our work ultimately come down to the same act: investing in people.
A reformed civil service and an empowered school-leaver may appear to occupy different worlds, but they are, in truth, two halves of a single promise. We refuse to pursue one without the other.
A Marathon, Run Together
Philanthropy, as the saying goes, is a marathon, not a sprint. It is also rarely a solitary endeavour.
The scale of Africa’s ambitions means that no single foundation, no single family, no single corporation, and no single government can achieve them alone. The most meaningful progress we have witnessed has emerged when the public, private, and philanthropic sectors stop competing for credit and start collaborating for impact.
For us, that belief in partnership is not merely professional; it is deeply personal.
Working together as a married couple has taught us that complementary strengths, honestly combined, can achieve far more than either of us could accomplish alone. It is the same instinct we bring to every institution we help build: convening the right people, mobilising the right resources, and shaping solutions that reflect the realities of African societies rather than imported assumptions.
We are often asked about legacy.
The truth is that, for us, legacy has never meant a monument with our name on it.
It means the people we equip and the systems they go on to strengthen. It means institutions that continue to function long after their founders have departed. It means a public service capable of serving its citizens with excellence and integrity. It means young people who continue to rise, create, and lead long after we are gone.
That is the change we believe in.
And we would be glad of your company on the road to building it.