May 5, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
In a session titled “What Issues Lie In Our Future?” a group of philanthropy experts discussed where philanthropy might be going as the 21st century progresses.
For Akwasi Aidoo, executive director of Trust Africa, a foundation in Dakar, Senegal, the country to keep an eye on in the future is actually not on his continent.
“Unless you have been in Africa in the past few years you cannot understand that China is in Africa in the biggest way possible,” Mr. Aidoo said.
Grantmakers and charities working in Africa would be well advised to learn about the influence, power, and priorities China is increasingly bringing to Africa, he said.
Susan Raymond, senior managing director of Changing Our World., a consulting firm in New York sketched out some of striking demographic and technological changes under way.
Nano technology—basically very small machines that she said could one day “allow a shirt to change into a raincoat at the first drop of water” is just one such gee-whiz marvel that may be coming.
She advised grant makers to not be daunted by the pace of change but to make at least 10 percent of their grants for risky efforts, which she defined as “problems that nobody really understands.”
She said that in “pushing the edges of understanding” you could expect at least 50 percent of the efforts to fail. But, she said, efforts that succeed have the potential to be transformational.
