“The conditions of the grant are not neutral.”
Read the fine print of almost any global health grant and you will find it: the logic model borrowed from Western corporate management. The indicators tied to outputs that can be photographed. The reporting timeline designed around a fiscal year that has nothing to do with planting seasons, harvest prayers, or school calendars in East Africa. The requirement that all funds flow through a U.S.-registered intermediary.
None of this is accidental. It is architecture.
Colonialism did not end when flags were lowered and independence was declared. It evolved. It put on the language of development, of partnership, of capacity building. It learned to say “community-led” while still holding the pen that signs the check. And nowhere is this evolution more legible — or more consequential — than in the structure of global health funding.
Colonialism learned to say ‘community-led’ while still holding the pen that signs the check.
What the Architecture Reveals
At Ubuntu Village, we work across East Harlem, Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. In every location, we witness the same dynamic: communities that have sustained life — through war, through drought, through epidemic — are asked to translate their survival into a language that was not built for them. They must prove their work is “evidence-based” using studies conducted by universities in countries that colonized them. They must demonstrate “capacity” to organizations whose definition of capacity looks like miniature versions of themselves. This slippery use of the word deserves scrutiny of its own — as we explore in a closer look at what “capacity building” often actually means, the phrase can just as easily describe teaching a community to want what we already planned to give it as it can describe genuine partnership.
The ancestral knowledge systems that kept communities alive for centuries? They do not appear in most logic models. The grandmothers who have been delivering babies safely for decades? They are not the “qualified health workers” the grant requires. The ceremony that brings a community back from collective trauma? It cannot be measured in QALYs.
This is not a gap in global health policy. It is a feature.
The grandmothers who have been delivering babies safely for decades? They are not the ‘qualified health workers’ the grant requires.
The Funding Flows Tell the Story
Follow the money in global health and the colonial map becomes visible. The majority of funding for health programs in sub-Saharan Africa is controlled by organizations headquartered in the United States and Europe. Community-based organizations in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria routinely receive a fraction of what passes through the hands of international intermediaries who take “management fees” before resources reach the people doing the actual work.
When we at Ubuntu Village asked our partners in Nairobi, Kampala, and Lagos what they needed most, the answer was rarely the intervention a funder had already designed. It was unrestricted funding. Time. Trust. The ability to respond to what their community identified as urgent — not what a grant cycle deemed fundable.
That gap between what communities need and what the system funds is not a resource problem. It is a power problem.
What Alternatives Actually Look Like
We are not the first to name this. We will not be the last. But naming it without offering a different way forward is its own kind of violence.
At Ubuntu Village, we are building toward a model of partnership rooted in the Ubuntu principle: I am because we are. This means:
- ✦Centering the community’s own definition of health — not just the absence of disease, but the presence of dignity, belonging, and ancestral continuity.
- ✦Funding relationships, not just projects — because trust takes longer than a grant cycle.
- ✦Recognizing ancestral and traditional knowledge as evidence — not as a supplement to research, but as a primary source.
- ✦Demanding that international organizations shrink their footprint and expand their accountability to the communities they claim to serve.
None of this requires a new program. It requires a different set of questions. Not “How do we bring health to this community?” but “What does this community know about health that we have been too colonial to learn?”
What does this community know about health that we have been too colonial to learn?
A Note to Our Donors
If you support Ubuntu Village, you are part of this reckoning. We do not ask you to fund us as saviors delivering services to passive recipients. We ask you to invest in communities as protagonists of their own healing — communities that were whole before the grant, and will be whole after it.
The conditions of the grant are not neutral. But your relationship with us can be. Read with us. Ask questions with us. And when you see the architecture of extraction in the organizations you fund, name it.
That is where change begins.
If you’re asking what this kind of partnership looks like in practice — and why giving to it is itself a spiritual act — read Tithing to the Future.
Ubuntu Village Inc. is a 501(c)(3) rooted in East Harlem, with programs in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. We work at the intersection of ancestral wisdom, public health, and community power. Learn more at ubuntuvillageusa.org.
References
- Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Financing Global Health 2025: Cuts in Aid and Future Outlook. Seattle, WA: IHME, 2025.
healthdata.org — Financing Global Health 2025 - KFF Global Health Policy. U.S. Global Health Country-Level Funding Tracker. Updated 2025.
kff.org — U.S. Global Health Funding Tracker - Osakwe N, et al. Decolonizing global health: a scoping review. BMC Health Services Research, 2025.
BMC Health Services Research — Decolonizing Global Health: A Scoping Review - Abimbola S & Pai M. Decolonizing global health—what does it mean for us? BMJ Global Health / PMC, 2023.
PMC — Decolonizing Global Health: What Does It Mean for Us? - Mwangi W, et al. Decolonising global health research: Shifting power for transformative change. PLOS Global Public Health, 2024.
PLOS Global Public Health — Shifting Power for Transformative Change - Rao N, et al. Towards authentic institutional allyship by global health funders. PMC, 2024.
PMC — Towards Authentic Institutional Allyship by Global Health Funders - Think Global Health. The State of Global Health Funding: August 2025. Council on Foreign Relations, 2025.
Think Global Health — State of Global Health Funding, August 2025
This is why Ubuntu Village went to Uganda — not with charity, but with solar infrastructure and diaspora solidarity, building in partnership with communities already working toward their own futures.
Related Reading
Michele Mitchell is the Founder, President & CEO of Ubuntu Village Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit rooted in East Harlem, New York, with programs in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. A writer, advocate, and community strategist working at the intersection of ancestral wisdom, public health, and community power, Michele leads Ubuntu Village’s work to center communities as the protagonists of their own healing. She writes from the conviction that science and spirit are complementary, that healing is relational, and that community is the medicine. Read more about Michele, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
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