Co-producing Environmental Resilience for Inclusive African Land Economies within the Water-Energy-Food-Health Nexus: A Transdisciplinary Participatory and Community-Led Approach

The projected 16-28% decline in bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa in 2025 creates unprecedented space for financing innovation rooted in African practices that have sustained communities for centuries. This session goes beyond adapting existing models—we explore untapped African financing innovations that could revolutionize global sustainability research funding. In Kenya, over 300,000 chamas collectively hold $4 billion in assets, while South Africa's 820,000 stokvels manage R44 billion ($2.4 billion) collectively. These rotating savings systems—known as esusu (Nigeria), susu (Ghana), tontines (Francophone Africa), mukando (Zimbabwe)—demonstrate sophisticated financial governance operating on trust, reciprocity, and Ubuntu principles. Stokvels operate on the understanding that the wellbeing of one is connected to the wellbeing of all—a regenerative principle unexplored in conventional research finance. This convening creates deliberate space for emergent innovation. We bring together Science Granting Councils from 17 countries, philanthropists, researchers, and community finance practitioners to discover how indigenous financial wisdom might inform new research funding ecosystems. What if research funding operated like stokvels—collective contributions, rotating access, social accountability? What if we adapted tontine principles for Pan-African research cooperatives? What if Ubuntu-based governance replaced extractive investor models? We invite participants not to present predetermined solutions but to engage in structured innovation processes: discovering unexpected connections between traditional finance and research funding needs; prototyping hybrid models combining institutional capacity with community wisdom; testing ideas through rapid scenario planning; and forming unlikely partnerships that wouldn't emerge in conventional convenings. This session explicitly welcomes the unknown—breakthrough innovations emerging when diverse knowledge systems collide. We create conditions for systemic transformation by centering African agency, honoring indigenous innovation, and opening space for ideas that advance Agenda 2063's vision of an Africa driven by its own genius.