On 5 March 2020, the first in-country South African tested positive for COVID-19. Less than three weeks later, on 23 March, after schools and universities had already closed and a number of organisations had adopted a work-from-home policy, the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the whole country would go into hard lockdown for 21 days from midnight on 26 March 2020.

It was January 2024, almost 13 years since Fayus Inc, a US-based distributor of Nigerian food products, had started investing in oil palm plantations in Nigeria. The project was progressing well and included a plan to build an oil palm processing mill so that Fayus would own a fully vertically-integrated oil palm business by 2027. Fatai Yusufu, who had founded the business in 1992 and grown it into a global enterprise, now had the opportunity to expand the plantation by a further 5 000 hectares (almost doubling its size).

It was July 2021 and a beautiful midwinter day in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The temperate conditions belied the turmoil of political protests that had spread to all-out vandalism and looting across the province and, to a more limited extent, Gauteng. Durban’s inner-city, home to the Denis Hurley Centre (DHC), an inter-faith charity serving homeless people in greater Durban, was greatly affected. As Raymond Perrier, director of the Centre, watched the events unfold, he knew there would now be an even greater need for the work of the Centre.

Louise Driver, executive director of the Independent Philanthropy Association South Africa (IPASA), a membership-based organisation of independent philanthropic funders, shared the challenges of the slow progress of the association’s three-year initiative to encourage its members to adopt a climate lens in their funding strategies and to progress members along their climate response journeys.

In early March 2024, Adri Williams, the managing director of Khayelitsha Cookies (KC), a social enterprise based in Cape Town, South Africa, was satisfied that, 20 years after it was founded, KC was achieving its vision of providing meaningful work to otherwise unemployable women in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town. But although the company was technically solvent, it still had outstanding debt of R1.1 million (nearly US$60 000), which needed to be repaid by 2027.

In November 2023, during National Disability Rights Awareness Month in South Africa, Steve, Jabulani and Malcolm, three employees with disabilities who worked for Corpco, a large organisation based in Johannesburg, met up for a chat at the coffee shop in their office. Their conversation turned to how to cope with the challenge of being defined by their disability, despite the fact that the country had progressive policies on the inclusion of employees with disabilities in the workplace.

At midnight on Thursday, 26 March 2020, the South African government ordered a three-week lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequently extended this lockdown for a further two weeks until the end of April 2020. Among other measures, businesses not classed as “essential” had to cease operation.1 This meant that Jonathan Robinson, founder of Bean There Coffee Company had to close his trendy Cape Town and Milpark coffee shops, as well as the company’s hospitality and corporate business.

In March 2019, Elena Gaffurini, managing partner of DEV Mozambique (DEV), sat down to evaluate the business. DEV, based in Maputo and launched in 2015, was a consulting and services company supporting entrepreneurial development in Mozambique, by training and supporting small businesses in agricultural-related sectors to improve food security.

In April 2018 the Standard Bank Group opened its first fully-functional branch in Côte d'Ivoire. The bank had exited the country in 2003, when the return of civil war to Cȏte d’Ivoire made it unsafe to conduct business. After political stability returned in 2012, and at the request of its corporate clients, the bank had started a re-entry process in 2013.

For ten years, Gregory Maloka, managing director of Kaya FM, had lived the Afropolitan ethos of Kaya FM. In his career in radio, he had seen the broadcast medium go through several epochs and had never wavered in his resolve to change not only how radio was perceived in South Africa, but also to use it as a tool for social change. Now, at the end of the first quarter of 2018, Maloka was reviewing the station’s results. Sales revenues were down, and listenership figures had not grown as projected.