About two weeks ago, a friend sent me a simple message: would I donate to the Al‑Habibiyyah Islamic Society food bank in Abuja? That small request opened a bigger question: What exactly is this food bank? Who does it serve? And how does it keep going, year after year?
The answers should force us to rethink what we mean by “philanthropy” in Nigeria. Al‑Habibiyyah’s food bank offers a concrete window into how grassroots philanthropy already works in Nigeria. Established as part of the Al‑Habibiyyah Islamic Society’s welfare and endowment work in the early 2000s, the food bank has evolved from a modest Ramadan charity effort into a highly organized annual programme at the central mosque in Guzape, Abuja. The basic model is simple: the society accepts cash donations and food items from worshippers and well‑wishers, pools them, and then distributes cooked meals and raw food packages to fasting Muslims and anyone who shows up in need. According to the welfare director, they can share over 2,400 food packs on a single day and routinely distribute hundreds of additional packs containing rice, semovita, oil, noodles, and clothing. In 2025, Al-Habibiyya disclosed that it spent roughly N110 million on Ramadan feeding, underscoring how substantial the operation has become amid rising food prices and economic hardship. Surveys place Nigeria high in global generosity, with roughly nine out of ten adults reporting donations in 2024 and giving nearly 3% of their income on average. Much of this giving occurs through religious channels: zakat and tithes, church and mosque welfare offerings in the form of transfers of food, cash, and clothing from those with a little more to those with almost nothing. Family remittances also play a similar role, as siblings, cousins, uncles, and aunts both at home and abroad contribute to school fees, buy books, and support small improvements to schools and clinics back home. Adding the countless self-help projects, neighborhoods repairing boreholes, building classroom blocks, covering hospital bills, and funeral costs, and it becomes clear that official reports, which focus on registered NGOs and large corporate grants, only capture a small part of the true story of generosity across Nigerian communities. Schools like the KNOSK N100-a-day Charity Secondary School in Kuje, Abuja, bring this into focus. KNOSK was established in 2019 to support children from the poorest households and out-of-school children. For N100 a day, students receive books, uniforms, at least one meal, computer-based learning, and, for girls, monthly sanitary pads, all funded through small, consistent contributions from sponsors. The school has enrolled about 170 children, with roughly 60 percent being girls, and reports no fee-related dropouts. Essentially, it functions as a community-driven philanthropic project that pools small donations into ongoing support to address educational exclusion. Alumni associations and rotating savings groups, like esusu and ajo, are popular parts of Nigerian philanthropy landscape. Old boys’ and old girls’ associations pool funds to provide scholarships, hire teachers, and set up labs. Market women and low-income workers rely on savings clubs as informal social insurance. For most Nigerians, these are the first options they consider during times of crisis or opportunity. However, these associations and their contributions rarely appear in policy discussions about the “philanthropy sector.” And then there is the newer, noisier social‑media crowdfunding. On any given day, your timeline will throw up urgent appeals: a child needing surgery, a family thrown out of their home, a brilliant student stranded for lack of fees. Influencers and digital activists now routinely mobilise followers to step in. VeryDarkMan is one of the most visible. He is not alone. Skit‑makers, lifestyle influencers, and health advocates have turned Instagram, TikTok, and X into de facto fundraising platforms, spotlighting individual cases and driving followers to send money directly to families or to a designated account. In practice, crowdfunding pages, live videos, and bank‑transfer screenshots now sit alongside mosque welfare committees, KNOSK‑style schools, and alumni WhatsApp groups as part of Nigeria’s giving ecosystem. Which brings us back to Al‑Habibiyyah. The mosque’s food bank started as part of its welfare and endowment efforts in the early 2000s. It has since expanded into a well-organized Ramadan feeding program at its central mosque in Guzape. Leaders emphasize that the initiative is about more than just food. It aims to ease the burden on the poorest households, reduce the humiliation associated with hunger, and promote a sense of shared humanity that crosses religious boundaries. Al-Habibiyyah has even partnered with the Jewish community in Abuja to distribute thousands of meals to both Muslim and Christian recipients. This is philanthropy as an improvised form of social protection. The queues grow longer when food inflation hits hardest or when unemployment depletes resources and keeps food out of reach for the poorest of the poor. The mosque fills a gap left by macroeconomic policies and weak welfare systems, using moral authority and community trust to mobilize resources and preserve the dignity of those who are wounded and abandoned in society. But it is also philanthropy constrained by informality. Like many grassroots initiatives, the food bank is lightly documented and structurally under‑resourced. It relies on seasonal generosity rather than predictable funding. These informal, unseen efforts coexist with the highly visible and growing formal, structured Nigerian giving: corporate CSR programs, family and private foundations, high-net-worth signature projects, and diaspora-run charities. Banks launch education and health initiatives with press conferences and billboards. Telecommunications companies sponsor digital skills academies. Oil and gas companies fund community projects as part of their community obligations. Formal philanthropy has notable strengths, can mobilize more resources, and is highly professionalized, with multi-year programs running on sophisticated systems. It can standardize interventions, child-friendly schools, science labs, and health campaigns across multiple states and engage the government at the national or state level. They are considered more scalable, sustainable, and resilient. Yet it still has its own blind spots and weaknesses. CSR spending often spikes around crises, anniversaries, or marketing pushes, rather than being driven by a clear long-term strategy. Activity is focused on a few sectors: education, health, youth entrepreneurship, and in big cities like Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt. Many high-profile projects flow into named buildings, specialized hospitals, or national entrepreneurship programs, while grassroots efforts like Al Habibiyyah’s food bank or KNOSK’s school in Kuje struggle to find stable support. Because media coverage focuses on formal philanthropy, the informal sector is marginalized and remains unseen. The complex network of religious giving, remittances, self-help initiatives, crowdfunding, and small institutions that do much of the work stays in the background. Part of the challenge is the lack of infrastructure that connects givers to one another and to credible local efforts. In countries where philanthropy is more institutionalized, this infrastructure is critical: publishing giving reports, training staff, certifying organizations, running pooled funds for specific causes, and acting as a voice for the sector. In Nigeria, this is missing. Grassroots projects rarely have access to advisory services, peer learning, or pooled funding. CSR teams in companies rely on the same small circle of NGOs, influencers, and ambassadors because there is no widely trusted platform that maps credible partners across the country. Influencer-led crowdfunding moves large sums quickly, but with little in the way of accountability structures, coordination, or pathways from one-off rescue efforts to systemic change. This is not just a technical gap; it is a political one. When we discuss philanthropy, we often frame it as personal kindness—good people helping others out of their own free will. That narrative isn’t wrong. But philanthropy is also a system through which society tackles public problems. It shapes whose pain gets recognized, which gaps in government support are filled, and which ideas get a chance. Seen from this perspective, donations, endowments, remittances, zakat, alumni projects, crowdfunding campaigns, and CSR budgets are not just acts of generosity. They form a vital part of the political economy of the help industry. If Nigeria is serious about building a fairer country, it cannot continue to treat the philanthropic industry with contempt, as ‘opposition’ or leave it to chance. A more organized philanthropic landscape can transform efforts like Al-Habibiyyah, KNOSK’s school, into credible national responses to development by providing access to predictable funding, advisory support, and peer networks. It would give corporate, high-net-worth, and digital donors a clear path to sustainability and resilience and help institutionalize their role in national development. The real question is whether those managing Nigeria’s affairs will intentionally build that system or continue to treat nonprofits as opposition groups while ignoring the potential of the vast informal giving sector.
Olaide, Development Analyst and Philanthropy Expert can be reached at dayo.olaide@ideapf.com