By Prof Sylvester Odion Akhaine
Introduction
If I were to rephrase the title of this lecture from the assigned topic, I would say: “Rotary: from Philanthropy to Philanthropy”. Unless the assignor has in mind a mission creep for the 121-year-old organisation, that is, a transition of its members with philanthropic hearts into governance, which is the sphere of the state. I will return to the issue of the state later in this lecture. However, one can play the devil’s advocate by noting that there is much evil in the land, so much so that there is a corresponding yearning for good governance. We live in a country where the welfare of the citizens does not matter to those running the affairs of the country. Nigerians across class delineation have had to play local government: build houses for themselves, provide light for themselves, provide water for themselves, pay children’s school fees; commute on bad roads and pay exorbitant transport fares; and provide for self-defence due to insecurity. Given these social problems, good governance becomes imperative. Even then, the problems raise the question: will non-state actors, in other words, philanthropic organisations such as Rotary, solve the problems of society? In what follows, I address the issue of agency, a category that I think the Rotary organisation belongs to, and also community.
Notion of agency and community
Why talk about agency? How is it relevant to Rotary as an organisation? To answer these questions, we need to operationalise our meaning of agency. The concept of agency is conceptually rich and varied, but I will avoid the conflation and obscurantism that comes with theorising. When the word agency is mentioned, what comes to mind is an organization providing a service; it can be private or public. In this respect, we talk about a government agency responsible for a specific state function. In the same vein, an agency becomes a state institution. In a more philosophical sense, it is the capacity of a person to act independently, with free will in navigating the vagaries of life. It is the independent will that translates into actions. Thus, it is meaningful to talk about human agency, an embedded concept with the attributes of intentionality, in other words, purposivity and goal-orientedness. It is the reason why Schlosser (2019), in his entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, defined an agent as one with free will while agency is its manifestation. He goes further to offer what he calls the standard conception of action in theorising agency. According to this view, “a being has the capacity to exercise agency just in case it has the capacity to act intentionally, and the exercise of agency consists in the performance of intentional actions and, in many cases, in the performance of unintentional actions” arising from intentional actions. Anthony Giddens, the famous author of The Third Way, provides an integrated view of agency and structure in his Central Problems in Social Theory (1979). According to him, there is a relationship between human agency and social structure. In other words, they are mutually constitutive. The agent creates and recreates structure as the transmission belt of intentionality with a corresponding impact on the agent.
Emirbayer and Mische (1998: 970) in their essay “what is agency?” define agency “as the temporally constructed engagement by actors of different structural environments—the temporal-relational contexts of action—which, through the interplay of habit, imagination, and judgment, both reproduces and transforms those structures in interactive response to the problems posed by changing historical situations” indicates a community of action, or a community in which actions occur. In this way, community becomes locational and situational, transcending primordial boundaries of ethnicity and nationalism. It is therefore understandable that Rotary’s philanthropy transcends the aforementioned primordial boundaries.
Rotary and Act of Goodwill
Rotary International, as a global service organisation, occupies a central place in humanitarian service. In the context of worldwide poverty, humanitarian service is the best intervention that non-state actors can offer. Globally, Rotary International has invested in many edifying projects. The Rotary Club of Chapala Sunrise is involved in local wastewater facilities and health clinics supporting indigenous communities in Jalisco, Mexico. In the United States, the Rotary Club of Sebring opened a new climate-controlled public restroom in Florida following a community-driven construction effort. In South Sudan, Rotary International provided over 100,000 science and legal textbooks alongside computers to local students. Rotary is driving polio eradication in Pakistan and Afghanistan through global partnership and Clean Water and Sanitation (WASH) with an investment worth over US$130 million via global grants since 2013 to bring safe water and sanitation to schools and communities. Nigeria has also benefited from Rotary International’s key humanitarian and community development projects. For example, the country benefited from Maternal and Child Health worth US$2 million for improving prenatal and newborn care. The organisation has also invested in immunization campaigns, polio surveillance, polio eradication, and disease prevention through partnerships with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the government to prevent disease recurrences. Other areas of intervention include targeting of malaria, diarrhea, and pneumonia; Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) through solar-powered or motorized boreholes and sanitation facilities for schools and primary healthcare centers; donations of neonatal incubators, phototherapy units, and mammography machines for teaching hospitals; local clubs fund school infrastructure upgrades, donate classroom desks, and provide educational grants across various states in the country. In Agbara, the Rotary Club has made several humanitarian interventions, building classrooms and equipping some schools in the Igbesa area and notably the construction of the Corpers Lodge.
Philanthropy is not Enough
Inspite of the above-mentioned acts of benevolence, social problems proliferate. According to the IMF 2026 Global Economic Outlook, titled Global Economy in the Shadow of War, the Fund observed as follows:
The global economy has, to date, withstood a series of shocks, yet another one—this time a military conflict engulfing the Middle East since the end of February— is testing this resilience. This is the latest culmination in a series of events that have been reshaping international relations and raising geopolitical tensions markedly across all regions in recent years. The conflict has already inflicted humanitarian costs, damaged critical infrastructure, and severely disrupted maritime and air traffic in the affected region. Economies around the world face repercussions through the direct impact of higher commodity prices, indirect second-order effects on inflation expectations—which tend to be especially sensitive to energy and food prices—and amplification effects coming from risk-off sentiment in financial markets. Commodity-importing emerging market and developing economies are at risk of being hit harder, with a depreciation of their currencies exacerbating the impact of higher energy and food prices. The global economic impact will crucially depend on the conflict’s duration, intensity, and scope, which are inherently unpredictable” (IMF, 2026).
Within this broader global outlook, the economic statistics for Sub-Saharan Africa are not looking good. According to the World Bank, general government gross debt sits at approximately 56.1% to 57.9% of GDP. Poverty and food security are dire. Around 464 million people remain in extreme poverty, and roughly 120 million face acute food insecurity. Yet Africa sits on a vast wealth of natural resources while available resources are mismanaged and embezzled by state actors. Notwithstanding, the task of overcoming global poverty is the business of the state despite the neoliberal catechism of rolling back the state.
I have argued in my essay on “The Third Sector and Development” that the assumption that the sector can play a great deal of a role in driving development and alleviating poverty in developing countries is wrongheaded (Akhaine, 2013). The third sector is useful as it may seem due to the failing capacity of the state to drive development. Of course, the state in Africa, neopatrimonial and corrupt, in essence, has been unable to tackle the social problems in the continent squarely. But given the potential resources of the continent, the redemption lies with the state. It is further argued that it is only the state that has the capacity to dispense social welfare to the people. The historical fact of the absence of indigenous capital in Africa and the state as the primary source of capital accumulation lend credence to the pre-eminence role of the state in driving social welfare delivery.
In the same paper, aforementioned, I emphasised the ideological underpinning of the welfare state by paraphrasing the then IMF President, Mr. Camdessus. It is
the need to improve the human condition. Realising this goal meant the dedication of a huge amount of the Gross Domestic Product to the welfare provisioning. Attention was paid to funding of education at all levels; funding of health needs of the population; provision of comprehensive pensions for a good number of the population; social support for the vulnerable groups in society; unemployment benefits for the unemployed; a regime of subsidy to certain category of social goods and other social benefits” (Akhaine, 2013).
It is this role that the state in Africa should re-dedicate itself to. To achieve the goal of the welfare state, good governance is imperative. By good governance, we mean a political system that is run based on democratic principles, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, and respect for the rights of the citizens to freedom of expression, association, and movement without hindrance. In this respect, good governance respects the people as the alpha and omega of development; it is accountable to them and governs in their own interest. These essentials of good governance that I have mentioned align with the definition of the IMF (1996) and Johnston (2002, cited in UNIDOC, 2020). IMF notes that good governance is about ensuring the rule of law, improving the efficiency and accountability of the public sector, and tackling corruption in ways conducive to the growth of the economy. Johnston (2002) sees it as “legitimate, accountable, and effective ways of obtaining and using public power and resources in the pursuit of widely accepted social goals”.
Conclusion: from Goodwill to Good Governance
In the foregoing, I have tried to capture the agency of the Rotary, an organisation devoted to humanitarian services on a global scale. It has been argued that the problem of the continent is so enormous that it requires a statist solution. The state is the organisation that has the wherewithal to mobilise resources on a national scale to address the problem of society considerably. Philanthropic organisations, a bracket that Rotary belongs to, may try; they cannot muster state-capacity leverage to solve social problems. But we live in a world that is so inured to the large-scale impoverishment of the population; in that world, an element of benevolence, put differently, goodwill is required. Apart from the state, only a few organisations can scratch the tip of the iceberg. The Rotary organisation is certainly one and is dedicated to making a difference in the pursuit of their motto: “Service Above Self”. Implicit in the motto is that Rotarians are men and women of goodwill and should be encouraged to venture into the state sphere, in other words, join politics to help change society through governance.
The author delivered this lecture at the Investiture of Sir Philip Ebosele as the 42nd President of Rotary Club, Agbara, held at Alarco and Suites Hotel, Agbara, September 5th, 2026.
References
Akhaine, S. O. (2013, November 2). The third sector and development [Keynote paper]. Inauguration of the Chinyere and Eliazar Egbu Foundation, Four Points Sheraton, Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria.
Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology, 103(4), 962–1023. https://doi.org/10.1086/231294
Giddens, A. (1979). Agency, Structure. In: Central Problems in Social Theory. Contemporary Social Theory. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16161-4_3
International Monetary Fund. (2026). Global economy in the shadow of war. International Monetary Fund.
Schlosser, M. (2019). Agency. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2019 ed.). Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/agency/
