Friend or Patron? Social Relations Across the National NGO\u2013Donor Divide in Ghana

Emmanuel Kumi,James Copestake

doi:10.1057/s41287-021-00375-3

Emmanuel Kumi, James Copestake

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-021-00375-3

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Abstract

The article examines the institutions governing relations between grant using national NGOs and grant giving international donors in three regions of Ghana (Upper West, Northern and Greater Accra Region). Formal procedural rules and professional norms can be viewed as necessary to minimise opportunities for informal patronage, rent-seeking and corruption made possible by the unequal access to resources. However, semi-structured interviews, life histories and observation highlight the positive role informal networks, connections, personal contacts and friendship play in enhancing collaboration between donors and national NGOs. Friendships originating in kinship and ethnicity, school links and past collaboration offer opportunities for influencing and resource mobilisation, but can also weaken NGO sustainability. Informal contacts and face-to-face interactions also build trust and strengthen lines of accountability, with non-adherence to shared norms resulting in sanctions and reputation loss. These findings affirm the positive role of informal relations, and highlight how they can complement formal rules and professional norms governing NGO–donor relations rather than undermining them. It throws a very different light on the role of informal institutions than that fostered by a discourse of clientelism and provides a more nuanced conceptual foundation for assessing ‘formalisation’ as a normative strategy.

Highlights

This article examines the institutions governing relations between donors and national NGOs in Ghana
We show that donor agencies seek to formalise their relations by enforcing formal procedural rules and professional norms, Ghanaian donor representatives and NGO workers draw on their social relations, shared values and ideas and informal networks in helping them allocate resources and manage their development work
Interview data suggest that the relationship between Ghanaian donor representatives and NGO leaders is personalised in nature

Summary

Introduction

This article examines the institutions governing relations between donors and national NGOs in Ghana. The existing literature on NGOs have mostly focused on formalisation of rules as part of the design of donors’ aid chain framed normatively around patron–client relations (Wallace et al 2006) This literature has paid much attention to formal procedural rules and professional norms on governance and accountability requirements (see Ebrahim 2003; Agyemang et al 2017) to the neglect of the informal aspects of such relationships. There are relatively little empirical research on how informal networks and personal connections enhance collaborations between donors and national NGOs from the perspective of sub-Saharan Africa.

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