Seven out of ten responding organizations provide advisory services to their governments on public policy. Agendas are influenced by decision-makers, public bodies, public policy needs, and funding availability. The 2026 On Think Tanks survey covering fifty organizations from sub-Saharan Africa reveals a tension that the figures render brutal: 92% of these organizations declare they directly contribute to a policy or public debate, 66% cite lack of funding, 56% rely primarily or almost entirely on project-based financing, and 78% cite foreign foundations as a funding source. Organizations state that funding availability conditions the subjects they can pursue, but the survey does not allow us to conclude that they exercise real influence over an agenda they do not control.
Key Points
- Among the 50 sub-Saharan responding organizations in the OTT 2026 survey, 92% declare they directly contributed to a policy or public debate; 56% depend primarily or almost entirely on project-based financing (On Think Tanks, 2026).
- Funding availability influences the subjects that can be pursued; organizations produce work within agendas shaped by public demand, public policy needs, and available resources.
- The World Bank funds the African Union’s ATTP, a project notably aimed at establishing a think tank database; the OTT survey describes structural vulnerabilities tied to short cycles and project financing.
- Three trajectories are possible by 2040: the status quo, diversification constrained by aid reduction, or the emergence of a pan-African research fund.
- Signals exist—African private financing, South-South cooperation, inverted conditionality—but none has yet changed the sector’s structure.
A Technically Influential Sector, Structurally Fragile
Over twenty years, the number of think tanks in sub-Saharan Africa has increased noticeably in several capitals. Governments consult them, parliaments hear them, media cite them. In the sub-sample of 50 sub-Saharan African organizations, 92% declare they have directly contributed to a policy or public debate.
But this influence success rests on a financial foundation that prohibits independence. 66% of sub-Saharan African respondents cite lack of funding; 80% holds only for ten respondents from French-speaking West Africa. Most operate on project cycles of twelve to eighteen months, renewable at the discretion of their funders. When a project ends, teams shrink. Some respondents associate funder withdrawals or cuts with resource losses and declare they adapt notably through cost reduction, partnerships, or diversification.
Flexibility is often presented as a quality of the sector: it is also its main vulnerability.
This picture is not unique to sub-Saharan Africa. In Latin America and South Asia, similar tensions exist. But the imbalance is less pronounced there: Brazilian, Indian, or Korean think tanks have developed domestic funding bases—private sector, national foundations, contracts with government agencies—that give them room to maneuver. In sub-Saharan Africa, this domestic funding base remains limited. The African private sector finances little research on public policy.
Governments, when they commission studies, often lack dedicated budget lines. International funding constitutes an important source for organizations and exposes them to changes in development aid.
Funders Decide, Researchers Produce
Financial dependence does not mean intellectual servility. African researchers in think tanks are, for the most part, trained professionals capable of resisting explicit pressures. The problem is structural: it operates before pressure is even applied.
Financing a theme can condition the capacity to pursue it, but the survey does not conclude that funders alone decide which questions merit asking. Funding availability influences the subjects it is possible to pursue, without the survey establishing funder control over formats, methodologies, or timelines. African researchers work within these constraints rigorously, but the constraints themselves result from interactions between funders and organizations.
This mechanism produces structural gaps. Research on themes such as local governance, customary land systems, informal markets, or mental health policies, which do not figure among Northern donor priorities, receives limited funding. Research on African trade policy, intra-African capital movements, or continental economic diplomacy also faces financing constraints. Governance is the most frequently declared research priority in sub-Saharan Africa in the sample, with no evidence this results from Western donor priorities. The survey establishes a significant perceived influence of funders on the agendas of sub-Saharan African respondents, but does not allow attribution of this influence to Northern funders alone.
The Senegalese press documented this gap in July 2026, after several Dakar think tanks refused to submit projects on customs system reform, unable to find available funding for this theme. The topic concerned the finance ministry; no funder made it a priority.
Influence Without the Agenda
There exists a distinction that the On Think Tanks survey figures render visible without stating it explicitly: that between technical influence and intellectual autonomy. Respondents declare technical influence and institutional and financial constraints; the survey does not allow us to conclude there is a lack of intellectual autonomy.
Technical influence is the capacity to produce rigorous analysis that enters a decision-making process. It is real. Senegalese, Ghanaian, Kenyan organizations have shown, on specific issues—tax reform, agricultural policy, public health—that they could weigh on concrete decisions. Their methodological expertise is not in question.
Intellectual autonomy is something else: the capacity to choose questions, define analytical frameworks, produce knowledge rooted in African realities rather than donor preoccupations. Funding availability influences research options, but the survey does not establish that it imposes a limit on intellectual autonomy.
This dynamic is consistent with what we observe in other domains where dependence on external funding shapes agendas. When citizens sense that decisions are made beyond their reach, democracy becomes hollow and silent: the same sense of dispossession runs through African researchers whose research agenda is defined thousands of kilometers away. Public policies built on poorly formulated questions respond poorly to real problems. But questions are poorly formulated when they have been conceived by actors distant from the ground.
Three Trajectories Toward 2040, None Automatic
The World Bank funds the African Union’s ATTP, a project notably aimed at establishing a think tank database. The OTT survey describes structural vulnerabilities tied to short cycles, project financing, and low reserves. Future trajectories, however, remain open and conditional.
In the short term, the documented scenario is a new contraction of bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa. Bilateral cooperations remain funding sources, but ODA flows to sub-Saharan Africa are sharply declining. In a context of constrained funding, think tanks remain active in public policy processes, while resource availability limits research choices without the survey establishing that their agenda is defined by the North.
A second trajectory is beginning to emerge in certain contexts: a reduction in bilateral aid, whether voluntary or constrained by budget crises in donor countries, forces African think tanks to diversify their funding. This diversification would be painful in the short term—some organizations would not survive—but could create conditions for partial autonomy. African enterprises, continental foundations, governments with more robust study budgets could fill part of the void. This trajectory is not guaranteed: diversification could also create new dependencies toward African private actors whose agendas are different, but not necessarily closer to public needs.
The third trajectory is the most ambitious and most distant: a pan-African public policy research fund, anchored to the African Union and the continental private sector, which would finance agendas defined by the think tanks themselves. This scenario exists as discussion in several continental forums. It would require sustained political will and significant resources, two conditions that are currently lacking simultaneously.
Signals to Monitor, Levers to Activate
Between these trajectories, several signals would allow assessment of the direction the sector is evolving. The share of domestic funding, both public and private, in sub-Saharan African think tank budgets is the first indicator. If it exceeds 20% by 2030 for a significant number of organizations, the dynamic of dependence begins to correct itself.
The second signal is less quantifiable but equally important: the number of research agendas defined locally, without external thematic conditionality. Several African think tanks have begun experimenting with what some call “inverted conditionality”: organizations define their research priorities, and funders then decide whether or not to finance them. This is the inverse of the dominant model. A few European foundations have agreed to submit to it on pilot projects. The scale remains modest.
South-South cooperation represents a third lever. Brazilian, Indian, and especially Korean think tanks, whose ecosystem has succeeded over twenty years in reducing dependence on American funding, have developed expertise that African organizations could adapt. Researcher exchanges, cross-training programs, joint research projects on shared issues—rapid urbanization, energy transition in development contexts, natural resource governance—already exist on a small scale. They could be amplified without waiting for the creation of continental funds.
The African think tank platform, whose post-2027 evolution is a signal to monitor according to the World Bank report, could become the institutional framework for this cooperation. Its capacity to adopt a funding mandate, not merely networking, will be decisive.
The Legitimacy of Public Policy at Stake
The question posed by the On Think Tanks survey data is not abstract. At what threshold of external dependence does the influence of African think tanks become counterproductive for the quality of public policy?
No figure directly answers this question. The quality of analysis produced by African think tanks on available themes remains significant.
The legitimacy of African public policies hinges on their capacity to respond to real needs of African populations. Research in public policy rooted locally, not merely technically competent, contributes to this legitimacy. Short cycles, project financing, and low reserves constitute institutional vulnerabilities that funding shocks expose, but the data do not show that technical competence and intellectual autonomy cannot coexist.
What the sector has built over twenty years—trained teams, proven methods, networks of real influence—is a solid foundation. The question opening for the next decade is whether these capacities can be exercised over African agendas, or whether they will continue to produce excellence in service of priorities defined elsewhere.
Sources
- On Think Tanks, State of the Sector Survey 2026: Influence without a safety net, the resilience challenge facing African think tanks, https://onthinktanks.org/articles/influence-without-a-safety-net-the-resilience-challenge-facing-african-think-tanks/
- World Bank, African Think Tank Platform (ATTP), mapping report, May 2026 (no link available)
- Afrimag, African think tanks between influence and dependence, August 2026 (no link available)
- Le Soleil (Dakar), Research financing: Senegalese think tanks facing funder diktat, July 2026 (no link available)
