More aid is being promised to tackle poverty, especially in Africa. This is welcome and urgently needed. However, little attention has been paid to understanding whether current aid disbursement mechanisms are appropriate to building autonomous, strong local organisations and communities.

Donors are getting more prescriptive in the way that they fund non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and have tightened the requirements for accessing, using and accounting for aid. This is partly due to concerns about corruption in developing countries and to try to exert control over the development process to meet the targets set in the developed world.

An international research team from Oxford Brookes University in the UK, the University of Natal in South Africa, Makerere University in Uganda and ActionAid Uganda has built on their earlier work on ‘the standardisation of development’ and explored the tensions created by the current terms and conditions of donor funding. The research is based on work in the UK, Uganda and South Africa but has relevance and resonance beyond Africa.

The research found that current approaches do not match stated commitments to participation, local ownership and building a strong civil society. Most NGOs follow dominant donor agendas - either willingly or for survival - and policymakers are reluctant to even ask questions about the impact of financial policy and procedures on development work.

Changing donor fashion about what will achieve positive change requires NGOs to change and reshape their agendas. So the focus on service delivery and scaling up was replaced with a concern that NGOs should build local capacities and promote participation for problem solving locally; this is now being usurped by the ‘rights based approach’ which concentrates on lobbying and advocacy for poor people.

These shifts in thinking are problematic for NGOs because of the way they switch their agendas and skills. However, the implications for ever-changing donor requirements, with their increased focus on written plans, reports and evaluations, and procedures developed in the UK (such as the logframe) being compulsory, have largely been ignored by donors, NGOs and researchers.

Key findings from the UK research include:

• The way funding is secured and the conditions attached play a major role in shaping the way change and development are understood to take place, the nature of development work and the quality of partnerships.
• The logic behind many tools and conditionalities is top down; procedures have been drawn from the public and private sectors in the UK and USA which contradict NGO commitment to local processes, local ownership, participation and building strong local organisations.
• In supporting ‘partners’ there has been a shift from relatively minimal procedures, light measures of evaluation and a responsive approach to supporting their work, to a more structured, bureaucratic approach.
• Planning strategically at a global level has put control of what is to be funded and how success is measured back into the hands of UK agencies.
• Funding remains top down; staff training focuses on ensuring staff meet the log frame and project cycle requirements rather than enabling them to work responsively in complex and challenging contexts.
• There is great competition for funding between NGOs, seriously inhibiting real joint work.
• NGOs are pushed to focus their accountability and reporting upwards to meet donor demands but no similar pressures encouraging downward accountability.
• Few people or organisations are willing to challenge the dominant, rational planning and accountability paradigms.

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Policy implications include:

• These research findings are largely ignored by policymakers. They are dismissed as depressing or overstated, and while the call for more aid goes on, there are almost no calls for changing or questioning the way aid is disbursed and accounted for.
• Donors should coordinate with each other to consider the collective impact of their funding requirements on the UK NGO sector and realign their procedures with their vision of development and change.
• Institutional donors need to track how they give funding and how they define accountability impacts on the way programming is done.

Source(s):
‘An investigation into the reality behind NGO rhetoric of downward accountability’ by Tina Wallace and Jennifer Chapman in ‘Creativity and Constraint: Grassroots Monitoring and Evaluation and the International Aid Arena’ edited by Lucy Earle, INTRAC, 2004
‘NGO Dilemmas – Trojan horses for global neo-liberalism?’ by Tina Wallace, Socialist Register Full document.
‘Funding trends in the UK’, BOND Networker: Issue 36 by Jennifer Chapman and Tina Wallace April 2004 Full document.

Funded by: UK Department for International Development, Nuffield Foundation

id21 Research Highlight: 22 July 2005

Further Information:
Tina Wallace
Queen Elizabeth House
Oxford University
21 St. Giles
Oxford OX1 3LA, UK

Contact the contributor: Tinawallace11@aol.com

Oxford Brookes University, UK

Jennifer Chapman
82 Downs Park Road
London
E8 2HZ

Tel: +44 (0)207 254 8297
Contact the contributor: jenny.chapman@tiscali.co.uk

University of Natal, South Africa

Other related links:
'Evaluations, strategic planning and log-frames – donor-imposed straitjackets on local NGOs?'

'The problems with using complex analytical frameworks: lessons from Nepal'

'Uganda takes control of its relationships with donors'