Non-governmental Organisations In Africa Research Articles

Non-governmental organizations in Africa: Role and place in the global political transformation

The article is devoted to the analysis of the activities of international (INGOs) and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in African countries. The very existence and activity of these organizations are conditioned by the needs of the development of civil society, which cannot always receive adequate assistance and support from official government structures. For this reason, different political groups often turn to NGOs for help. The article analyzes the problem of relations between non-governmental organizations and the state. They do not always add up simply, without contradictions. But, as a rule, they are built on balanced cooperation based on trust. It is important for the State to involve non-governmental organizations in solving urgent social problems, especially in the humanitarian sphere: the fight against poverty, lack of water, lack of sanitation, etc. Despite the fact that many NGOs are not subordinate to Governments, they nevertheless depend on them. The paper draws attention to the fact that NGOs in many African countries work in contact with representatives of the International Monetary Fund, as well as with such UN structures as the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and other foreign donors. This also applies to international NGOs with a political orientation. To a certain extent, they influence national politics and public opinion in their host countries in order to transform political regimes, as was the case, for example, in Tunisia and Egypt. In other African countries (Senegal, Niger) these NGOs tried to support organizations of civil protest movements during the election campaigns for the presidential election. In this regard, the problem of financing NGOs is of great importance, which has a direct impact on the trajectory of their development. Nevertheless, the State’s continued control over the activities of NGOs prevents their politicization where this trend manifests itself.

(Un)doing development: a postcolonial enquiry of the agenda and agency of NGOs in Africa

This paper seeks an alternative approach to the questions What ends do non-governmental organisations (NGOs) serve in Africa, and why does the proliferation of NGOs matter? The answers lie in exploring whether it is to develop Africa or to consolidate the western-dictated (under)development trajectory. Extending Shivji’s depiction of ‘Africa at the crossroads of the defeat of the national project and the rehabilitation of the imperial project’, this paper explores the ideological role of NGOs in perpetuating imperialism, reproducing alterity and entrenching dependency. Staged in Kenya with over 11,262 registered and 8893 active NGOs operating in various sectors of the economy, the problems necessitating the rise of NGOs remain obstinate, but the role and features of NGOs appear to situate them within the imperial project of disarticulation. The paper argues that NGOs are (un)witting allies in the neoliberal network/project of arrested development in Africa. The proliferation of and uncritical subscription to (neoliberal) orthodoxy while parading as neutral and apolitical enlists NGOs in servicing the structures of underdevelopment. Through a synthesis of secondary data and semi-structured interviews, it emerges that NGOs are implementing nodes of neoliberal orthodoxy feigning neutrality and only concerned with ‘problem-solving’, with no interest in fundamental changes aimed at challenges necessitating their emergence and proliferation.

Non-Governmental Organizations in Africa: Solutions for Building Sustainable Development and Creating Jobs for African Youth

Everyone knows about the richness of Africa; the continent has an abundance of human and natural resources that is next to none. Unfortunately, it suffers from hunger and extreme poverty; most African countries suffer from inadequate infrastructure, poor education and health. Specific questions arise. Why are we in this situation? We have vast lands, multiple rivers and underground water. However, we import food, medicine and clothes. Where is the problem? How can we get out of this closed circle? This paper outlines a roadmap for a better future for the next generations in Africa. This task will be done by taking advantage of the United Nations development plans, namely, sustainable development goals and invent mechanisms for the African continent to implement development priorities. Taking into account the differences within each country in regards to population structures, needs and natural resources available in each nation.

Indonesian Land Rights and Development

Indonesia’s traditional land tenure system, called adat, satisfied the needs of many generations, but did not provide certainty or formal legal relationships conducive to development. The post-independence government has sought to mold the existing system into a more modern form that would better aid its development and has at the same time, sought to maintain control over the country’s natural resources, each to the disadvantage of local communities. The agrarian reforms that were passed created a dual system of law, and resulted in conflict between traditional rights and the modern, western-influenced, interests and purposes of the state. The lack of title registration has been a continuing impediment: the complex procedures, the time, and the cost of securing registered title has been beyond the capacity of many landowners. In dealing with the mix of laws and customary rights and the lack of clear titles, it is the practice of lenders to give a small level of value to land as collateral, not nearly as much credit as would be given in a more modern system. Character counts more than collateral for land users seeking financing. But registration is now coming. The new, technologically advanced, mobile LARASITA registration system recently created, is an important innovative step that is moving the country in a positive direction.* We begin, in Sections I and II, with a brief discussion of the current political structure in Indonesia and of Dutch and British rule. Section III looks at the customary law, called adat, and how it has been affected by Islamic law and European rule. Sections IV and V provide an overview of the central tenants of the Basic Agrarian Law Number 5 of 1960, the centerpiece of the national legal effort to modernize the adat land tenure system. Section VI focuses on the national government’s use of the Basic Forestry Law of 1967 to classify over 69% of the nation’s land as forest. This has the effect of frustrating the ability of local adat communities to farm large swaths of land. The Indonesian land titling system is discussed in Section VII. Section VIII focuses on important regional variations in adat and land titling and juxtaposes two regional variants – that of the Dayak people of Kalimantan, with their relatively less modern system, and the heavily sharia oriented system in Aceh. Section IX discusses the importance of land titling for access to financing. Then Section X looks at the new LARASITA land registration system, which, with its modern tools and thinking, is dramatically increasing land registration in substantial parts of the country. * The original form of this article was done as part of the Sidley Austin LLP Africa-Asia Agricultural Enterprise Pro Bono Program. The Sidley Austin program provides free legal support to small and medium sized agricultural-related enterprises and developmental non-governmental organizations in Africa and Asia. See http://www.sidley.com/Africa-Asia-Agricultural-Enterprise-Pro-Bono-Program/.

Grassroots volunteers in context: rewarding and adverse experiences of local women working on HIV and AIDS in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.

Many nongovernmental organizations in Africa rely on grassroots volunteers to provide critical health services. Considering context and the interplay of individual, organizational, and societal influences on the experience of volunteers, this paper addresses three questions: What do grassroots volunteers contribute? What organizational processes promote volunteer engagement? What are the positive and negative consequences of volunteering? Eighteen members and staff of the Tanzanian HIV and AIDS NGO, KIWAKKUKI, were selected from 6000+ women volunteers to be interviewed. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for themes. Within KIWAKKUKI, volunteers contributed time and local knowledge, leading to an indigenous educational approach building on local norms and customs. Volunteers' engagement was motivated by the desire to support family members, reverse stigma, and work/socialize with other women. Benefits to volunteers included skills acquisition and community recognition; yet some volunteers also reported negative experiences including burnout, conferred stigma, and domestic violence. Positive organizational processes built on cultural practices such as collective decision-making and singing. The findings point to important considerations about context, including the synergistic effect training can have on local traditions of caring, complications of gender inequity, and how community health planning processes may need to be modified in extremely poor settings. This research also suggests good utility of the research framework (the Bergen Model of Collaborative Functioning) that was used to analyze volunteer engagement for service delivery in sub-Saharan contexts.

‘Going Out’ or Staying In? The Expansion of Chinese NGOs in Africa

This article examines the overseas behaviour of Chinese non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) in two African nations, Ethiopia and Malawi, with varying political regime types. Our findings suggest that, irrespective of regime type, Chinese NGOs have yet to make a substantial impact in either nation. We argue that, despite the strength of the Chinese state and high levels of international development assistance given, domestic politics and regulatory frameworks in host nations still matter a great deal. Our study suggests that the Chinese model of international development will continue to be one in which temporary one‐off projects are favoured; and, insofar as social organisations will play a role, they will be in the domain of government‐organised NGOs rather than grassroots NGOs.

AN EMERGING CIVIL SOCIETY: THE IMPACT OF THE 2008 SICHUAN EARTHQUAKE ON GRASS-ROOTS ASSOCIATIONS IN CHINA

The western China, especially near the Wenchuan region witnessed a terrible earthquake in the year 2008, which led to some severe damage in the country. Several interviews and studies are conducted to explain the impact of this Sichuan earthquake on the development of the various grass-root associations present in the country.

BOOK REVIEW: Michael, Sarah. UNDERMINING DEVELOPMENT: THE ABSENCE OF POWER AMONG LOCAL NGOs IN AFRICA. Oxford: James Currey and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.

Reviewed by: Undermining Development: The Absence of Power Among Local NGOs in Africa Brett R. O'Bannon Michael, Sarah . 2004. Undermining Development: The Absence of Power Among Local NGOs in Africa. Oxford: James Currey and Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 206 pp. $ 22.95 (paper). Sarah Michael has turned her doctoral thesis into a fine book, which addresses an important and timely question. Her analysis follows from a simple proposition: local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa lack power, which she defines as "the ability to set their own priorities, define their own agendas and exert their influence on the international [End Page 85] development community, even in the face of opposition from government, donors, international NGOs and other development actors" (p. 18). This matters because the absence in Africa of powerful local NGOs—like those she finds in Latin America and South Asia—undermines the development prospects of the sub-Saharan region. The major contributions of this text are its explanation of why local NGOs in Africa lack power and a concluding chapter that draws on this explanation to advance a set of reasonable propositions for the amelioration of this condition. The argument is carefully constructed with data from interviews with a host of development actors in the capital cities of three case-study countries: Senegal, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Michael's theory stipulates that NGOs develop power through efforts to expand their "development space," to gain financial independence from donors, to establish links with the international development community, and to engage in various political—though not partisan—activities. The spatial concept is somewhat problematic. Though Michael holds that "space is a key element of NGO power" (p. 170), nowhere does she define it or lay out its terms of reference. Indeed, the word space is employed in at least six different ways: it refers variously to geographical or physical space, a division of labor with government, an issue (or policy) area, what one might refer to as "market share" within the voluntary sector, the freedom to act in a given political system, and a popular mandate to pursue various courses of action. Consequently, the apparent multiple meanings of space throughout the text are distracting and render the book less useful than it would otherwise be. The comparative-research design Michael employs, which boasts of good variation across the three cases on a wide array of potentially confounding explanatory factors (e.g., colonial experience, human development indicators, macroeconomic performance), enables her to draw sound inferences and advance reasonable generalizations. It likewise enables her to discount the most plausible alternative hypothesis, namely, that the weakness of African NGOs merely reflects the weakness of African civil society in general. Before launching into the three case-study chapters, Michael outlines a theory of power drawn from the works of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Dahl, Foucault, and Lukes, and from the experiences of powerful local NGOs in Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, and Peru. Her model is adequate for the immediate empirical task, which is to demonstrate the grounds on which African NGOs could—but to date have failed to—develop their power. As a general theory of power, however, it does not move much beyond the works she cites, and thus it does not add much to our understanding of the classic problem of the constitution and exercise of power and authority. The application of her model is, nevertheless, wholly convincing. The case-study chapters recount fieldwork in three countries from three regions of the continent. Though all her interviews appear to have taken place in the principal urban center of each country, which suggests a sample bias that might undermine the generalizability of her findings, [End Page 86] a cross-national analysis based on fieldwork in three countries is still an impressive feat. (This urban bias might also reflect the actual bias among local NGOs, but some of the research she cites—Patterson (1999), for example—demonstrates the importance of exploring rural civil society.) These three chapters well support her contention that, contrary to powerful NGOs in Latin America and South Asia, local NGOs in Africa suffer various shortcomings in the four constituent elements of NGO power. A truth table one could construct from these chapters, and...

Book Review: Sarah Michael (2004) Undermining Development: The Absence of Power Among Local NGOs in Africa, Oxford and Bloomington: James Currey and Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-85255-439-7 (Oxford: James Currey) & ISBN 0-253-21772-5 (Bloomington & In

I found this to be a highly analytical and empirical book, partly because it is based on a Ph.D. thesis received from Trinity College, University of Cambridge (2001). Her first book, it powerfully explores how the absence of power structures among local African non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has undermined development in sub-Saharan Africa. None of the local African NGOs she examined were ‘powerful’, in a way similar to ‘powerful’ local NGOs in Asia and Latin America. By ‘power’ she means the ability of an NGO to set its own agenda and to exert influence over others to achieve it. The central thesis is that the more powerful NGOs tend to more sustainable, the less powerful tend to be less sustainable. The book’s overall objective was therefore to demonstrate exactly how local NGOs have been denied power and exactly how more balanced power relations would benefit development in the South, and in Africa specifically. My major criticism is that Michael’s theorization of ‘local NGO power’ did not pay adequate attention to the role of the mass media. As she herself noted towards the end of the book, it is the media that in many ways control the size of the development space in a (African) country and crucially, the citizens’ exposure to local NGOs’ work. The media can create or destroy the power of local NGOs in Africa and that was not fully recognized in the book.

Undermining Development: The Absence of Power Among Local NGOs in Africa (review)

Reviewed by: Undermining Development: The Absence of Power Among Local NGOs in Africa Brett R. O'Bannon Michael, Sarah . 2004. Undermining Development: The Absence of Power Among Local NGOs in Africa. Oxford: James Currey and Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 206 pp. $ 22.95 (paper). Sarah Michael has turned her doctoral thesis into a fine book, which addresses an important and timely question. Her analysis follows from a simple proposition: local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa lack power, which she defines as "the ability to set their own priorities, define their own agendas and exert their influence on the international [End Page 85] development community, even in the face of opposition from government, donors, international NGOs and other development actors" (p. 18). This matters because the absence in Africa of powerful local NGOs—like those she finds in Latin America and South Asia—undermines the development prospects of the sub-Saharan region. The major contributions of this text are its explanation of why local NGOs in Africa lack power and a concluding chapter that draws on this explanation to advance a set of reasonable propositions for the amelioration of this condition. The argument is carefully constructed with data from interviews with a host of development actors in the capital cities of three case-study countries: Senegal, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Michael's theory stipulates that NGOs develop power through efforts to expand their "development space," to gain financial independence from donors, to establish links with the international development community, and to engage in various political—though not partisan—activities. The spatial concept is somewhat problematic. Though Michael holds that "space is a key element of NGO power" (p. 170), nowhere does she define it or lay out its terms of reference. Indeed, the word space is employed in at least six different ways: it refers variously to geographical or physical space, a division of labor with government, an issue (or policy) area, what one might refer to as "market share" within the voluntary sector, the freedom to act in a given political system, and a popular mandate to pursue various courses of action. Consequently, the apparent multiple meanings of space throughout the text are distracting and render the book less useful than it would otherwise be. The comparative-research design Michael employs, which boasts of good variation across the three cases on a wide array of potentially confounding explanatory factors (e.g., colonial experience, human development indicators, macroeconomic performance), enables her to draw sound inferences and advance reasonable generalizations. It likewise enables her to discount the most plausible alternative hypothesis, namely, that the weakness of African NGOs merely reflects the weakness of African civil society in general. Before launching into the three case-study chapters, Michael outlines a theory of power drawn from the works of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Dahl, Foucault, and Lukes, and from the experiences of powerful local NGOs in Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, and Peru. Her model is adequate for the immediate empirical task, which is to demonstrate the grounds on which African NGOs could—but to date have failed to—develop their power. As a general theory of power, however, it does not move much beyond the works she cites, and thus it does not add much to our understanding of the classic problem of the constitution and exercise of power and authority. The application of her model is, nevertheless, wholly convincing. The case-study chapters recount fieldwork in three countries from three regions of the continent. Though all her interviews appear to have taken place in the principal urban center of each country, which suggests a sample bias that might undermine the generalizability of her findings, [End Page 86] a cross-national analysis based on fieldwork in three countries is still an impressive feat. (This urban bias might also reflect the actual bias among local NGOs, but some of the research she cites—Patterson (1999), for example—demonstrates the importance of exploring rural civil society.) These three chapters well support her contention that, contrary to powerful NGOs in Latin America and South Asia, local NGOs in Africa suffer various shortcomings in the four constituent elements of NGO power. A truth table one could construct from these chapters, and...

HIV prevention in Africa: programs and populations served by non-governmental organizations.

The AIDS epidemic in Africa remains an urgent health crisis. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa play a critical role in the delivery of HIV prevention services and assistance to persons living with AIDS. African NGOs are conducting numerous HIV prevention programs with several at-risk populations, yet their efforts have only rarely been systematically documented. To address this gap in the literature, the authors surveyed one NGO in each of 29 African countries regarding their HIV prevention activities and populations served. This report provides details concerning HIV prevention activities across the continent and describes in detail innovative programs from Togo and South Africa. NGOs in the present sample operate with modest budgets and small staff sizes, yet conduct programs that reach large segments of their communities. NGOs were most likely to report community-level interventions such as peer-education or community outreach. Faced with an epidemic where the main transmission occurs via heterosexual activity, African NGOs were most likely to direct their attention to the general public and to youth. NGOs in Africa are struggling to implement sustainable, cost-effective programs with few resources. Strengthening the infrastructure and capacity of these key agencies is crucial to fighting the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Confrontation, co‐operation or co‐optation: NGOs and the Ghanaian state during structural adjustment

This article examines relations between non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) and African states, with particular reference to Ghana, during a period of structural adjustment and neo‐liberal hegemony in Africa. The growing number of NGOs in Africa, and the concomitant shift in international aid away from African states toward NGOs, places these new institutional actors at the heart of debates concerning democratisation, civil society, economic liberalisation, the role of state, and the nature of nation‐state sovereignty in an era of a World Bank/IMF condominium in Africa. Building on the work of Fowler and others, the article examines NGO‐state relations in Ghana in detail. It argues that NGOs fit in perfectly with the neo‐liberal agenda for Africa. With the state under attack from above and below, a new struggle for resources and power is being waged between NGOs and many African states, with, as the case study of Ghana shows, the outcome, in this transitory period, far from certain.

The Changing politics of non-governmental organizations and African states

Acknowledgments Introduction by Eve Sandberg Non-Governmental Organizations in Africa: Can They Influence Public Policy? by Michael Bratton State, NGOs, and International Aid in The Gambia by Deborah Brautigam The Christian Church as an NGO in Africa: Supporting Postindependence Era State Legitimacy or Promoting Change? by Karen Jenkins Evaluating the Role and Impact of Foreign NGOs in Ghana by Frederick T. Anang The Impact of Crisis and Economic Reform on Tanzania's Changing Associational Life by Aili Mari Tripp A Comparative Analysis of Institutional Development and NGOs in West Africa by Helmut K. Anheier Namibia: An Institutional Analysis of a Consultative Model of Decision-Making by a Democratizing State and Its NGOs by Eve Sandberg and Carol L. Martin Selected Bibliography Index

Implementing Effective Local Management of Natural Resources: New Roles for NGOs in Africa

Sustainable development seems an elusive objective for Africa's rural peoples, yet there are unique opportunities for nongovernmental organizations in Africa to work toward that goal. NGOs can facilitate this effort by strengthening institutional capacities at the local level. Several factors, however, impede NGO effectiveness. Among them are 1) issues surrounding NGO needs for autonomy and Government needs for control; 2) problems in scaling up NGO efforts and creating the necessary micro-macro linkages; and 3) confusion over appropriate roles for NGOs.This paper considers these issues in the context of two cases of NGO activity, an organization in Zimbabwe called Environment and Development Activities-Zimbabwe (ENDA-Zimbabwe) and an approach to rural development in Kenya, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), which involves international and national NGOs as well as the Kenyan Government. The paper suggests that NGOs can be more effective if they move from a project orientation to an enabling orienta...

Non‐governmental Organizations in Africa: Can They Influence Public Policy?

ABSTRACTAs non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) accumulate experience at implementing development projects, they sometimes attempt to increase their influence by engaging in policy advocacy. This article analyses the organizational conditions under which national NGOs in Africa have been able to influence the formulation of agricultural and rural development policies. Case studies are presented of three African NGOs that have sought, with varying degrees of success, to represent the ‘voice’ of the rural poor to policy‐makers. Comparative analysis of these cases leads to the conclusion that policy advocacy is most likely to be effective in organizations that have several key characteristics: an homogeneous membership, a federated structure, a focused programme, informal ties with political leaders, and a domestic funding base.

The politics of government-NGO relations in Africa

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), deservedly or not, have gained a reputation as the leading practitioners of rural development in Africa. African governments have responded ambiguously to the presence of these new agencies, on the one hand valuing the economic resources NGOs can raise, but resisting the political pluralization implied by popular development action. This article describes the growth of NGOs in Africa and proposes a framework for analyzing the dynamics of government-NGO relations. By means of examples drawn from Kenya and Zimbabwe, among other African countries, the article illustrates the strategies used by governments to exercise control, and by NGOs to assert autonomy. An argument is made that politics, rather than economics, best explain the contribution of NGOs to development, as well as the attitude of governments toward the burgeoning voluntary sector.