Power, intermediaries and access

In February, we looked at how funding circulates in Latin America and the Caribbean, where regional foundations, intermediaries and diaspora networks do much of the work of getting money to newsrooms. This month we turn to Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The same basic rule applies: very little money travels directly from a large donor to an individual outlet. What changes is who sits in the middle, how much power they hold, and how easy it is to get in.

If February was about noticing that intermediaries are the system, this issue is about noticing whose system it is.

Start with the regions, then notice the differences

Three features set both regions apart from Latin America. The table below puts them side by side:

The result is an ecosystem where access depends less on finding the right open call and more on understanding who holds the relationship with the donor.

Bilateral donors still set the shape of the system

GFMD’s own mapping of media assistance in Sub-Saharan Africa, published in January, gives the clearest picture we have. Between 2020 and 2025, it found 326 programmes with USD 518 million in committed funding. Four government donors dominate: Sida (27%), USAID (26%), the European Commission (19%) and the UK’s FCDO (5%). Foundations are a small slice by comparison: MacArthur accounted for about 2% and Open Society/Luminate for under 1% (See GFMD’s Mapping of media assistance and journalism support programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa).

The money is also concentrated. Zambia, Nigeria and Mozambique together received more than 60% of all mapped funding, while Central Africa received 5%. For a newsroom in Central Africa, that means competing for a much thinner pool. And the form of support is narrow: 93% was grant-based, 67% project-based, and only 1% was core, flexible funding, even lower than the 4.1% GFMD found in Latin America.

MENA has no equivalent mapping yet, but the pattern is familiar.  The evidence we do have points the same way as in Sub-Saharan Africa: The European Union, European bilateral agencies and, until 2025, the United States have been the main sources of support for independent media. Large calls illustrate how this works in practice. The European Commission’s media freedom grants for Syria, which closed in April, offered EUR 13.35 million across four lots of EUR 675,000 to 4 million, open only to consortia of organisations established in the EU, Syria, Lebanon, Türkiye, Iraq or Jordan. Money of that size reaches small newsrooms through partnerships, not direct applications.

Why intermediaries matter even more here

Official aid works differently from the regional philanthropy we described in February. Even in Latin America, GFMD’s mapping found that 59% of committed media aid in 2022-2026 is implemented by organisations based in the donor country. In Sub-Saharan Africa, implementation is split almost evenly between local organisations (41%) and international ones (43%), with regional organisations managing only 4%. The rest is recorded as other (2%) or not available (8%). The report’s conclusion is blunt: Africa-led organisations continue to face structural barriers to large-scale, multi-year and flexible funding.

For a newsroom, that has three practical consequences:

1. Your first funder is often an implementer, not a donor. The organisation you apply to or partner with may be managing a bilateral programme on someone else’s behalf, with that donor’s priorities and reporting rules attached.
2. Relationships matter more than calls. Implementers tend to work with partners they already know. Being visible to them before a programme is designed is worth more than a perfect application after it opens.
3. Power sits in the middle. Intermediaries decide which countries, themes and partners a programme covers. That is why localisation debates keep returning to who manages the money, not only how much there is.

This is not an argument against working with intermediaries. For most organisations they are still the realistic way in. It is an argument for choosing them deliberately, asking what share of a programme actually reaches local partners, and building relationships with more than one.

Regranting and pooled funds: growing, but still small

Pooled funds, where several donors combine money into one mechanism, are one response to that concentration of power. The International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM) is the most visible example. Its December 2024 round awarded USD 5 million to 20 newsrooms across four regions, including Africa and the Middle East, as two-year flexible grants, and it aims to invest USD 150 million through 2028.

At a smaller scale, African-led regranting schemes are filling some gaps with modest, fast grants for reporting and innovation. The GFMD mapping still found intermediary funders and pooled mechanisms minimal overall, and its recommendations call for more of them, alongside more programmes managed by African-led organisations.

In MENA, the regional funding infrastructure is thinner still. Recent efforts to explore a regional fund for public-interest media were set aside because the current funding environment could not support one. That tells you something about how hard pooled models are to build without a committed donor base.

When a donor leaves: what the US exit revealed

The United States’ withdrawal from media assistance in 2025 showed how exposed these ecosystems are to a single donor. USAID had accounted for roughly a quarter of mapped media funding in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the Levant and Iraq, USAID provided more than USD 5 million for media development between 2020 and 2024, plus USD 1.5 million from the State Department.

Other donors have not filled the gap. In a survey for the Carnegie Endowment, 48% of 177 respondents reported decreased support from other international donors in 2025, and only 21% reported an increase. The authors note that European donors, Sweden in particular, prioritised Ukraine, and that Open Society Foundations had already frozen most of its grantmaking to the sector in 2023.  Sida is also the largest mapped donor in Sub-Saharan Africa (27%), so its priorities matter there. Research from SAIIA reaches the same conclusion for Africa: alternative funders are unwilling or unable to replace what USAID left behind.

The lesson for fundraising is structural. When one bilateral donor funds a quarter of an ecosystem, its exit removes whole programmes, and the intermediaries that ran them, not just individual grants. Diversification has to happen at the level of the ecosystem as well as the organisation.

Local, regional and diaspora money: smaller and more relational

Local and regional philanthropy is where both regions differ most from Latin America. It exists, but it seldom calls itself media funding.

• In Sub-Saharan Africa, new voices are making the economic case for journalism. In a recent article, IFPIM’s incoming CEO and Bloomberg’s corporate philanthropy lead for Africa and the Middle East argued for co-investment between philanthropy, business and development institutions, treating public interest media as economic infrastructure.
• In MENA, regional funders such as the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture support documentary and creative work, which can overlap with journalism. Gulf philanthropy is large but rarely reaches independent news.
• Diaspora giving is the thread to watch. Some independent media in the region are now looking to high- and middle-net-worth individuals in the Arab diaspora. As in the Caribbean, this is relationship-led money: it follows trust and personal networks, not open calls.
• Tech philanthropy is also present, through programmes such as the Google News Initiative. Researchers at the Al Jazeera Media Institute have cautioned that it can create new forms of dependency for less-resourced newsrooms.

Exile is an ecosystem of its own

In both regions, a growing share of independent journalism is produced from outside the country it covers.

Sudan: More than 500 Sudanese journalists have fled the country since the war began in April 2023, according to the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate, and they face legal restrictions and other pressures in exile. In a February 2026 GFMD case study, the director of Ayin Network said emergency funds and fellowships have helped journalists relocate, but that needs are far greater than the support available, and that fundraising for exiled journalists remains ad hoc and piecemeal.

Syria: Since the fall of the Assad government, the picture is mixed. As of February 2026, at least 20 Syrian outlets were operating in exile or in a hybrid model, with a presence inside and outside the country, and many have cautiously and partially re-entered or are considering it. Some, such as Syria TV, have moved their teams back to Damascus. A full return is held back by unfinished administrative regularisation, security risks and a funding crisis.

Exile changes the funding logic. Registration, banking and legal status in the host country often matter as much as editorial quality. Funders that work in this space tend to value flexibility: the European Endowment for Democracy, for example, directed about 19% of its MENA grants to Syrian partners between 2020 and 2024 and set up an emergency funding mechanism after the fall of the Assad government, later extended to partners hit by the US aid freeze.

If your funding search has been shaped by EU/US logics

Some of February’s advice applies here unchanged. Some needs adjusting:

• Map the intermediaries before the calls. Find out which implementers manage the bilateral programmes in your country, and who their current partners are.
• Ask where the money stops. When joining a consortium, ask what share of the budget reaches local partners, and whether it covers core costs. Also ask who owns the donor relationship, who controls reporting, and what happens to partners if the programme ends early.
• Treat regranting schemes as a way in, not a consolation prize. Small, fast grants build the track record that larger programmes look for.
• Plan for a donor leaving. If one bilateral programme funds most of your work, assume it could end, and know which other intermediaries work in your area. Stagger grant end dates so no single programme ends all at once, and build a reserve where you can.
• Build diaspora relationships slowly. This is personal, long-term work, closer to major-donor fundraising than grant writing.
• If you work from exile, sort out registration and banking first. Ask funders which host-country legal statuses they accept before you apply.

Where to start

• GFMD’s mapping of media assistance in Sub-Saharan Africa (January 2026): who funds what, where, and through whom.
• GIJN’s Africa funding and grants page: a regularly updated list of regional funders.
• Arab Foundations Forum: a way into the philanthropy networks of the Arab region.
• Media in Exile, MediaDev Fundraising Guide: practical guidance for newsrooms working from outside their country.
• IMS, Where is the money? (2024): regional perspectives on funding and investment, including Africa and MENA.