The Rise of Muslim Philanthropists and Entrepreneurial Islam
The initial spectrum of Muslim NGOs in Ghana was rather limited until the first decade of the twenty-first century. Except for some national organizations, such as Muslim Relief Association Ghana (MURAG), Muslim Family Counselling Services (MFCS), and Islamic Council for Development and Humanitarian Services (ICODEHS), most Muslim faith-based organizations were linked to ethnic or sectarian groups.
However, the number of local Muslim philanthropists has swelled during the last two decades, assumably at least in part reflecting the emergence of a (relatively) affluent Muslim middle-class in the wake of the booming Ghanaian economy. Many of these NGOs still adhere to the typical objective of a narrow dawatist agenda: mosques, education, water, and Ramadan/Iftar/Qurban projects added with support extended to orphans, widows, and the needy. Dawatist foundations and NGOs operated by Muslim scholars and business entrepreneurs are expressions of entrepreneurial Islam, i.e., the usage of a public establishment such as an NGO, a social media platform and audio-visual media, for religious outreach, turning their founders into “religious entrepreneurs” through their combination of social and economic aspirations.
Illuminating examples of Muslim religious entrepreneurship are those of Haji Saeed Hamid Jallo, Sheikh Sani Kuwait, and Abubakar Sadiq Hussein. Takoradi-based Muslim broadcast journalist and scholar Haji Saeed Hamid Jallo established the Tawheed Development Foundation (TDF) in 2005 as a dawah and charity organization, mainly organizing local seasonal relief campaigns. The Charity and Daawah Foundation (CDF), in turn, is a typical NGO operated by Muslim scholar Dr Mohammed Sani Hussein Niche, a.k.a. Sheikh Sani Kuwait, and is linked to his masjid, the Masjidus-Salam Alhamdu in Maamobi, Accra. Abubakar Sadiq Hussein’s Change for Change Foundation (CfCf) is an Accra-based NGO operating humanitarian, empowerment, educational, water, and dawah projects. Turkish donors such as HUDAI have sponsored its annual Ramadan and Qurban outreach programmes to rural areas in the Central Region since 2020.
Muslim Business Entrepreneurs as Philanthropists
Muslim business entrepreneurs dominate among the founders of foundations and NGOs. One of them is Abdul Mannan Ibrahim in Kumasi. His engagement in philanthropic activities stems from his experiences as a poor youngster who had lost his mother at an early stage. His Al-Mannan Charity Foundation has until today remained a locally based charity although its activities have expanded manifold. Based in an office in Kumasi that also serves as the studio for Al-Mannan TV, he and his staff raise money for individual projects through house-to-house and street collections as well as fundraising campaigns on social media. The trajectory of Abdul Mannan Ibrahim resembles that of many founders of business entrepreneurs turning into philanthropists.
The Society for the Assistance for Orphans and Disabled (SAFOAD), founded by Haji Abubakar Yakubu Batalima in the late 1990s, has made headlines for its annual provisions for orphans during Muslim festivals, donations to persons with disabilities, and its investments in entrepreneurial skills training for youths. The Alhaji Yusif Ibrahim Foundation, in turn, is a charity founded by Muslim multi-sectoral business tycoon Alhaji Yusif Ibrahim, executive director of the Dara Salam Group of Enterprises. Established in 2000, his foundation operated for years in Kumasi and offered scholarships to needy students and sponsored annual free health checks.
The Karima Charity Foundation, established by the CEO of Karima Shipping Enterprises Mohammed Aminu Osman, a.k.a. Awudu Sofa Salaga, in 2010, has evolved into a major donor organization. Its main project has been the construction of the Karima Educational Complex in Kumasi, consisting of a kindergarten, primary and junior high school, a public library, an ICT centre, and a science lab. The Yaasalam Opportunity Center, in turn, serves as the Corporate Responsibility Arm of the Afro Arab Group of Companies. The 2007-established multi-business enterprise of Alhaji Salamu Adamu includes, among others, Afro Arab Microfinance, and is part of his philanthropic outreach to deprived Zongo communities.
Muslim Politicians Turned Philanthropists
The increased engagement of Muslims in party politics and statal business enterprises, their nomination into high-ranking ministerial and governmental positions, has created a new form of Muslim religious entrepreneur in Ghana, namely that of a politician turning into philanthropist. Alhaji Hanan Abdul-Wahab Aludiba, Bawku-resident philanthropist, Executive Officer of the National Food Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) and leading member of the NPP, serves as an example. He is the founder and chair of the Aludiba Foundation, “a humanitarian organization dedicated to the plight of the poor, the underprivileged, children and the aged.”
Hajia Humu Awudu, (former) member of the NPP Youth Wing and NPP Parliamentary Candidate of the Wa Central Constituency, and her Hajia Humu Foundation (HHF, est. 2018), addresses both Muslim and non-Muslim/Christian communities in the Upper West Region, among others by making donations at Ramadan and Christmas. The Aliu Mahama Foundation (AMF), established by the late Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama in 2011 after his term of office, aims to help the needy and less privileged in society. The Partnership for Poverty Reduction (PPR), founded by Alhaji Farouk Aliu Mahama, supports agricultural, educational, and women empowerment projects in the Northern Region. The Samira Empowerment and Humanitarian Projects (SEHP), in turn, is a not-for-profit organization founded and managed by Haija Samira Bawumia, Second Lady of Ghana.
The Rise of Muslim Youth Leaders and Social Media Influencers as Philanthropists
With the expansion of tech entrepreneurship in Ghana during the 2010s, a new group of Muslim religious entrepreneurs entered the arena and transformed the Muslim NGO landscape. This group comprises of youth leaders, TV celebrities, and social media influencers. What combines them is their primary use of social media as their main tool for advocating, connecting, inspiring, networking, and rallying their followers—sometimes defined as members—near and afar, transgressing local, regional and national territories and boundaries, and giving rise to social movements with an impressive number of followers and volunteers.
One of the first of these was the Princess Umul Hatiyya Foundation, instigated by “African Women who Rock” Umul Hatiyya Ibrahim Mahama already in 2008 but active only for a few years. Others followed with the breakthrough of social media in Ghana: ‘Zongo Star’ Kansar Abdulai’s HajiaPosh Foundation, Hajia Wassila Mohammad’s a.k.a. Queen Lady’s Haske Bisa Kan Haske—Nuur fauka nuur (Light upon Light), Hajia Ibrahim Sadiq’s Kuburah Diamonds Foundation and its Zango Women Livelihood and Empowerment Programme, Issah Agyeman’s Essa Ajeman Charity Foundation, Issah Ibrahim Yunus a.k.a. Teacher IB and his Teacher IB Jihad Foundation, Humu Gaage’s All Rise Initiative and her Zongo Girls Rise project and Zongo Girls Exams Clinic, Haija Aisha Abdallah Ibrahim a.k.a. Aisha Freedom and her Sisters’ Hangout Ghana, and Ibrahim Baba Maltiti’s Problems Shared Problems Solved (PSPS).
Fashion designer Ibrahim Baba Maltiti founded his organization PSPS in 2017. PSPS operates only on social media and solicits funds from its members through calls on Facebook and WhatsApp. Its main objective is to identify problems in Zongo communities, for example the payment of a needy person’s hospital and/or medical bill or the provision of support to orphans and widows, and to solicit financial assistance for the cause from his network.
The Meryam Zakariya Yahya Foundation (MZYF), a.k.a. Mariam Foundation, stands out among the recently founded NGOs. Established by Meryam Zakariya Yahya, author of the book Notes from My Soul: The Realities of Living with Mental Illness (2021), as a platform to address problems of mental illness among young women in the Zongo communities in combination with (ad hoc) humanitarian relief initiatives, the Foundation is unique in its vision and mission.
The Expansion of Muslim Associations, Groups, and Movements
Formal Muslim initiatives by associations, groups or movements have existed for some decades now, although the majority of them tend to be restricted to a specific locality or community. Their lifespan has usually been rather short. A general tendency has been that a group of like-minded individuals form an action group to address a specific target, in many cases, the improvement or even modernisation of Islamic education. Others have focused on social and economic development among Zongo inhabitants or curbed political vigilantism in the Zongos.
The number of local Muslim philanthropists has swollen during the last two decades, assumably at least in part reflecting the emergence of a (relatively) affluent Muslim middle-class in the wake of the booming Ghanaian economy during the 2010s. Sheikh Mustapha Ibrahim is the most esteemed among them, whose life-long engagement has earned him several high-ranking and influential positions within the Ghanaian Muslim community in the past two decades. Other noticeable scholars-cum-founders of NGOs are Sheikh Alhaji Baba Issa (Muslim Family Counselling Services), Sheikh Abdurrahman Muhammad (Ansarudeen organisation), Sheikh Abdul Nasiru-Deen (Paragon Foundation), Sheikh Firdaus Ladan (Lean On Me Foundation), Sheikh Alhassan Nuhu (Faith Dawah Foundation) and Sheikh Alhaji Yusif Dauda Garibah (Adabiyya Islamic Society), among numerous others.
Sheikh Abubakar Ali Napari and Alhaji Salamu Adam, in turn, are Muslim business entrepreneurs turned philanthropist—the former is CEO of Napari Company Limited and the founder of The Light Foundation, the latter heads the Afro Arab Company and funds local social development initiatives.
The Expanding Role of Women’s Organizations
Traditionally, the associations and societies of Muslim women in Ghana were informal ones before the formation of the Federation of Muslim Women’s Association of Ghana (FOMWAG), informed me Fatimatu N-Eyare Sulemanu. However, with the establishment of women’s wings of Muslim organisations, such as the Ghana Muslim Mission Women’s Fellowship (GMMWF), formal Muslim women’s organisations including women NGOs and foundations stated to appear on the Ghanaian NGO landscape.
FOMWAG, formed in 1992, ranks among the oldest still operative bodies, counting various local groups, regional chapters and international branches, among others FOMWAG-UK. Apart from occasional donations to assist disadvantaged groups, FOMWAG organised a sensitisation seminar for imams on the theme ‘Linking principles of human rights with Qurʾan and the Sunnah to promote the well-being of women and girls’ in August 2020. Its Ashanti regional branch launched the Rural Community Project Boamang, Ashanti Region, in September 2020 to extend the hitherto urban bias of FOMWAG’s activities to promote positive parenting, adolescent girls’ empowerment, and women empowerment among marginalised and neglected rural communities.
Achievers Ghana is among the first-generation Muslim-led women NGOs. The Accra-based non-profit, non-political and non-religious NGO, established in 2001 as Achievers Book Club and renamed in 2015, focuses on providing reading and mentor programmes, scholarships, ICT and career skills for girls in disadvantaged areas of Ghana. A new generation of women-led Muslim NGOs evolved during the 2010s. Some of them are transnational organisations and operate inside and outside Ghana. One of them is the Global Muslimah Dilemma (GMD), with members and sympathisers in Germany organising fundraising events to support GMD’s Ramadan Iftar and Qurban distributions in Accra since 2017.
The Emergence of Non-Denominational Muslim NGOs
A recent phenomenon is the emergence of non-denominational CSOs founded and dominated by Muslims with an agenda of Zongo development. An example of such an organisation is the Tamale-based Advocates for Community Development (ACDEV), which started as a youth group in 2017 and, similar to other youth groups in their starting phase, concentrated on clean-up exercises and donations to schools. The Women Relief Alliance Foundation (WRAF), in turn, is an Accra-based organisation that has since its establishment in 2019 launched COVID-19 sensitisation, breast cancer awareness, and menstrual hygiene donation campaigns, arranged health screenings in Nima and Madina Zongos, and initiated a potable water project in the Boku rural community in the North East Region and support programme for rural women.
The Accra-based Mother of all Nations Foundation (MOANF), in turn, focuses on enhancing the educational skills of Zongo children in addition to running breast cancer campaigns. It has organized annual read camps since 2015, and launched the Adesua Kruwa Project as its new flagship programme in 2023. The Zongo Mothers’ Hope Foundation (ZMUF) aims to decrease the prevalence of maternal mortality in the Zongo communities and improve the health and well-being of women. The Star Creative Life Foundation Ghana, on the other hand, focuses on health care alongside health and first aid education and training.
The Landscape of Muslim Youth Associations and Movements
Muslim youth associations are daʿwa organisations, such as the Ghana Islamic Youth Foundation and the Abofu Faila Youth Association in Accra, the Federation of Responsible Muslim Youth Ghana in Kumasi, the Federation of Muslim Youth Groups—Ghana in Cape Coast, the Banu Abdalla Faida Youth, the Baye Do Everything, a Tijani youth movement in Accra, or the Yendi Moslem Youth Research Foundation, to mention a few of them.
The communicative aspect of social media usage by Zongo youth groups was profound during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020/2021. Most, if not all Zongo youth groups in Ghana, like Muslim leadership and institutions in general, were quick to adhere to government regulations on social distancing. Muslim leaders and organisations positively responded and launched a broad campaign on social media to notify about the COVID-19 protocols. So did most, if not all Zongo youth groups.
The formation and expansion of Zongo and Muslim youth groups has become a nationwide phenomenon. Most youth groups and networks tend to have a rather short lifespan on Facebook, perhaps correlating with their activities in real life. Nevertheless, a few of them have transformed themselves into quasi-institutions, i.e., turning themselves into (mostly) non-registered NGOs and CSOs.
The novelty of the Zongo youth groups in this Internet age is not their multiplication but some of them moving from ad hoc interventions to ambitious long-term investment projects. The common denominator of these groups is self-empowerment. They call for a new, positive self-representation of the Zongo communities, challenging the dominant perception in Ghana that the Zongos are criminal hotspots and slums hopelessly overcrowded with beggars and paupers.
The Expansion of International Muslim Charities and NGOs
The first phase of Muslim NGOs activism in Ghana was linked to dawah and mainly resulted in the construction of mosques and prayer sites. Nevertheless, a few international Muslim NGOs, such as the Libyan World Islamic Call Service (WICS) and the Iranian Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD), also made investments in health care and rural development projects.
The second phase of international Muslim NGOs (Muslim INGOs) started during the early 2000s. This phase was marked by the advent of Western Muslim charities and Islamic solidarity-based organisations in Ghana, such as the Zakat Foundation of America and the UK charities Al-Muntada Aid and Muslim Aid. Many of them were running Ramadan/Iftar and Udhya/Qurbani programmes, either by directly donating food and meat packages or cattle to be slaughtered, or indirectly funding the activities of local Muslim NGOs.
The Arab Spring and its consequences gave way to the third and contemporary phase of Muslim INGO s activism in Ghana. This third phase saw a reconstitution of the landscape of Muslim INGOs operating in Ghana, most notably the advent and massive intervention of Turkish Muslim charities. Moreover, the number of Western and non-Arab Muslim INGOs and increasingly Western national/local Muslim NGOs has expanded tremendously.
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