Adekunle Gold is turning his own story into funding for the people doing the daily work. The singer’s Adekunle Gold Foundation (AGF) and global financial platform Pesa have launched “We’re Not Done,” a $20,000 initiative to strengthen sickle cell organisations in Nigeria, Ghana, the United Kingdom and Canada. The announcement came on Thursday, October 22.
The money will go to four organisations: the Sickle Cell Advocacy & Management Initiative (SAMI) in Nigeria, Sickle Life in Ghana, It Takes A Village in the United Kingdom, and Not Just You in Canada. The funding is meant to help them expand work across healthcare access, patient support, education, awareness and advocacy. In his statement, Adekunle Gold said incredible organisations are working every day to improve the lives of people living with sickle cell, and that he and Pesa want to give them more resources to reach even more people. Pesa’s side framed the partnership as a push to go beyond awareness and deliver tangible support to affected individuals and families.
The scale of the need makes the timing matter. Nigeria carries the highest sickle cell burden in the world, with as many as 150,000 babies born with the disease every year, yet care remains underfunded and out of reach for many families. Adekunle Gold has said as much himself. Speaking to CNN’s Larry Madowo, he pointed to cost as the biggest barrier, noting that many people simply do not have the money.
That frankness comes from lived experience. Adekunle Gold was born with sickle cell disease and first spoke about it publicly in 2022, through his song “5 Star” and an open letter to fans. He wrote about a childhood and early adulthood shaped by pain, including a crisis at 20 that nearly broke him. What began as a confession has since become a long-term commitment. His foundation, built around destigmatising sickle cell, improving access to care and supporting patients, has been steadily turning that commitment into action.
The record is easy to trace. On World Sickle Cell Day in June 2025, the foundation launched “5 Star Care,” which provides free health insurance to 1,000 people living with sickle cell in Lagos. It was rolled out with the Lagos State Ministry of Health, the Lagos State Health Management Agency and SAMI. The same day, the foundation ran a medical outreach in Lagos with SAMI.
In September 2025, New York University announced a collaboration with the singer focused on sickle cell disease and mental health awareness, and the foundation also works with researchers at NYU’s Department of Global Health on new interventions. In March 2026, the foundation held its quarterly outreach and served more than 400 people, giving each patient medication and treatment supplies to last up to three months. Then on June 20, 2026, at Akerele Medical Centre in Surelere, over 500 people received specialist consultations, laboratory testing, pain and crisis management and medication, with the singer present to meet beneficiaries.
“We’re Not Done” extends that approach beyond Lagos. Instead of building a new structure from scratch, it backs organisations that already know their communities, which is often how small funding goes furthest. For an artist whose catalogue includes some of the most personal songs in Afropop, the work off stage is now becoming as defining as the music, and the name of the initiative suggests there is more to come.