Negotiating aid: UK funders, NGOs and South African development. South Africa Report.
Abstract
Between 1999 and 2003, an international team undertook research to look at the impact of donors on NGOs in terms of management practices and other conditions attached to funding. The research project explores how the adoption of donor policies and procedures affects the way development is understood and addressed by NGOs. Conditions on funding are designed, in part, to increase accountability, effectiveness, and impact through better planning, heightened accountability, and tighter managerial control over development processes. The project investigates the potential contradictions between these practices and the widely claimed objectives of promoting participation and empowerment. There are three case study countries that are the focus of this project: the UK, South Africa and Uganda. This draft report is structured around seven sections and focuses on the South Africa case study. The introductory section lays out the scope of the study and its principal findings for (a) the South African funding recipients and their projects and (b) the UK funders and UK-based NGOs. The second section of the report reviews the changing position of NGOs in South Africa's post-apartheid transition, wider information on social, political and economic conditions in the country, and, to the extent possible, overall patterns of development funding. This section also introduces the possibility of independent influences of management approaches. The third section summarises results from the first round of interviews conducted in South Africa with local and international NGOs and presents evidence derived from job advertisements on the changing activities and internal organisation of South African NGOs. The fourth section traces four \"aid chains\" from their origins in the UK, through Northern NGOs to South African organisations and projects to explore how conditions and expectations formulated upstream affect downstream organisations, their staff and their development activities. The fifth section then turns to key issues for the South African organisations - and our research concerns - drawing on information from the 17 SA NGOs involved in the research. The sixth section addresses a distinctive and key set of actors within the South African context, organisations dedicated to NGO training and organisational development. The seventh section, a concluding one, brings together the findings and reflects on the dynamics of race, class, gender and politics.
Citation
DFID, London, UK, 87 pp.
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