After Accra: What could shifting power — and knowledge — look like in a shared classroom?
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In early September 2026, joy∞untu joined civil-society leaders, funders, public institutions, diaspora and young people from across the continent in Accra for “Africa at the Centre: Leading Change, Shifting Power,” convened by WACSI with EPIC-Africa, Reos Partners, AFFORD UK and RINGO. Our representative, Moussa Lona, took part throughout, within the MOGAMBAS “family” group — named in honour of Cheikh Anta Diop and bringing together delegates from Mali, Ghana, Benin, Senegal and Mozambique. Over three days, the forum moved us deliberately from remembering and situating our realities, to disrupting and reimagining them, to building what comes next.
A word on who we are. joy∞untu is an emerging organisation that connects communities, activists and networks already working towards systems change with funders who are ready to support them. We believe that the people closest to the challenges also hold the keys to long-term change — when they have the autonomy, resources and trust to lead. Our name joins “joy” with ubuntu, the Southern African philosophy that the well-being of the individual is bound to the well-being of the community — “I am because we are” — while the infinity symbol (∞) reflects the boundless potential of collective action grounded in care for people and planet.
One sentence stayed with us: “participation is not power.” The forum was clear that shifting power is not only a demand addressed to outside actors; it also asks African institutions to look honestly at their own practices. Grounded in the “Accra Reset” — practical sovereignty, execution capacity and shared prosperity — participants called for real decision-making authority rather than symbolic presence; for communities, youth and women to hold power, not merely a seat; for funding to diversify toward local philanthropy, diaspora capital and domestic resources; for solidarity over competition; and for reciprocal learning that treats African institutions as producers of knowledge, not perpetual recipients of “capacity building.” Speakers urged us to start from assets rather than deficits, to value endogenous knowledge in how we raise and teach our children, and to work — as one put it — with decolonised minds.
We left Accra convinced of something simple: a vision this profound has to be experienced, not only declared. And we saw more clearly how one initiative already taking shape in our work could put some of these ideas into practice: learning together across continents.
Village History: looking honestly at our realities and our pasts
That path runs through an approach developed in India by our partner Samadhwani: Village History. It deliberately turns our attention to our own surroundings and our own pasts — to what has worked well and what has not — as documented by communities themselves rather than by outsiders. Elders are interviewed, stories are recorded, everyday knowledge is honoured, and a shared archive grows, with care and consent. The documentation is led by young people from the communities themselves. As they speak with elders, document local knowledge and look at their own communities through a different lens, some begin to see their own role in shaping what comes next. We began to see strong connections between this approach and what we had heard in Accra: communities and young people as knowledge-holders, assets before deficits, and learning that does not travel in only one direction.
A course where young people experience shifting power
We are now weaving this approach into an international course, “From development aid to global responsibility.” In small teams of four — students in Benin, India and Germany working alongside each others as peers — participants research their own communities through the Village History approach and ask where the very idea of “development” comes from: from Truman’s 1949 “underdeveloped areas” to Amartya Sen’s freedoms (1999), and to African thinkers such as Cheikh Anta Diop (1967) who stressed the importance of ancestral memory, or Claude Ake, who insisted that development must be democratic and rooted in people’s own lives (1996).
The reciprocity matters. Students in Benin and India are not there to teach German students about their realities, nor are German students there to study communities elsewhere. Each group starts at home. Each investigates its own history, knowledge and assumptions. Only then do they bring those perspectives into conversation.
Crucially, young people are not an audience here; they are co-authors. They do not only discuss shifting power — over 18 months, they practise it. All students become researchers and knowledge-holders, investigating their own realities and bringing what they find into a shared process of reflection. From there, they develop small initiatives using resources they can mobilise themselves, refine their ideas together, put them into practice, and jointly reflect on what happens. That, for us, is one small way of carrying something we took from Africa at the Centre into practice — concrete, reciprocal and lived rather than lectured.
An honest word — and an invitation
Connecting communities with funders who are ready to trust them is joy∞untu’s daily work — which makes the next point all the harder to write. We are proud of how we collaborate — grounded in our own ideas and in deep, reciprocal partnership across four organisations and three continents. Yet we have encountered a contradiction that echoes the discussions in Accra. While there is growing support for the language of shifting power, finding
resources for genuinely reciprocal work across communities remains remarkably difficult. So far, much of this collaboration has been sustained through evening work, voluntary time and the commitment of the organisations involved. Moving beyond that requires funding that values the relationship and learning process itself — not only predefined activities and outputs.
This is not a side issue; it is part of the very problem Accra named. To live “Africa at the centre” — not only in Africa, but in the world — people need opportunities to encounter other perspectives directly and reflect on their own. Reciprocity, and the resources that make it possible, must run both ways.
The forum asked us to move from participation to action, and from principles to lived experience. Our small contribution is a classroom without borders, where a generation can feel what shared responsibility means. If that resonates — whether you are part of WACSI’s network, a funder interested in exploring reciprocal approaches to funding,or a community ready to tell its own story — we would love to connect. An Africa at the centre, and a world that learns with it, requires spaces where knowledge and perspectives can genuinely travel in more than one direction.
About the author
joy∞untu joy∞untu
joy∞untu creates trust-based pathways for funding to flow directly to communities and facilitates participatory grant-making, where local actors decide how resources are used. We collaborate across ecosystems for joint working and mutual learning, and we document and share insights to help shift how development and philanthropy are practised. We work globally with a wide range of communities, activists and networks - including young people, Indigenous leaders to local organisations, and thematic networks.
About our partners
joyn-coop (Germany)
joyn-coop is a boutique consultancy for sustainable development, accompanying organisations and partnerships in designing and driving systemic change.
Samadhwani (India)
Samadhwani, based in Odisha, leads India's Village History and Cultural Documentation movement, helping communities - especially young people -document and digitally archive their own histories, oral traditions, folk arts and food cultures as a living resource for future generations.
Gymnasium Ritterhude (Germany)
Gymnasium Ritterhude is a public secondary school in Ritterhude, northern Germany, whose students take part in the course as the German partner.
