Global private sector philanthropy in the developing world: the giving motives of international private foundations to South Africa’s development landscape

Abstract

There is a growing interest in the role of the private sector in international development cooperation. Global development commitments, including the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), call for the private sector aid to help governments meet their developmental targets. In an era of shrinking official development aid and a changing aid architecture, philanthropic foundations are amongst the private sector actors expected to play a significant role in financing development initiatives; while some of these entities and initiatives are not necessarily new, available literature shows that they remain relatively unknown, therefore their role and impact in development cooperation is not well understood. The lack of empirical knowledge about their activities breeds many questions around their corporate origin, relevance and their motives for giving. This study seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge on global private development assistance by exploring the giving motives of international private foundations to South Africa’s development landscape. Findings of the study were from interviews with representatives of 8 international foundations from OECD countries operating in South Africa. The study also explored available secondary data on these organisations and consulted other sector players to help provide the data. The study adopted traditional development aid theories used to assess determinants of bilateral and multilateral aid, to explore international foundations’ giving motives. The study’s findings indicate that international foundations are motivated by a duality of factors reflecting not only their desire to meet the developmental needs of recipient countries but also to archive their other interests, such as, aligning with the altruistic moral values of a private founder, corporate citizenship and other indirect corporate benefits. The study also found that creating a relationship between the sending country and recipient is also an important factor for giving; donors at the same time benefits from good company reputation and a social license to operate in the receiving country. After concluding, the study makes various recommendations, including the need for further empirical investigation on the role and overall impact of private philanthropy.