- Tuesday 12th May 2026

Across Africa, civil society organizations are not fragile by default - they are forged in constraint. They operate without safety nets, adapt to volatility as a matter of routine, and build trust where formal systems fall short. Resilience is not a buzzword here; it is the baseline.  But resilience has a limit.  In her latest article, Rose Maruru argues that what African CSOs cannot overcome alone is their invisibility—poor signalling, weak discovery infrastructure, and limited pathways to capital that recognise their legitimacy and effectiveness. At a time when global funding is tightening and shifting, this invisibility becomes more than a disadvantage; it becomes a systemic risk.  This is what makes the moment urgent.  As aid models recalibrate and localization rhetoric meets reality, the question is not whether African organizations can deliver. They already do. The question is whether the systems around them will evolve fast enough to see them, trust them, and fund them at the level required.