![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
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.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Hay, “Ideas and the Construction of Interests.”
2 Shivji, Silences in NGO Discourse.
3 Manji and O’Coill, “Missionary Position”; Nabudere, Afrikology, Philosophy and Wholeness.
4 Berman, “Ethnicity, Patronage and the African State,” 307.
5 NGO Board, Annual NGO Sector Report, 41
6 Ibid., 16.
7 NGO actors/practitioners (AP) and development researchers (DR).
8 Tvedt, “NGOs’ Role at the ‘End of History.’”
9 Grovogui, “Postcolonialism,” 264.
10 Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 1–2.
11 Grovogui, “Postcolonialism.”
12 Mendonza, “Coloniality of Gender and Power,” 114.
13 Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 6.
14 Sakue-Collins, “Feminism, African Woman, and Femininity,” 2.
15 Bhabha, The Location of Culture; Said, Orientalism; Mbembe, On the Postcolony; Grovogui, “Postcolonialism”; Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”; Nabudere, Afrikology, Philosophy and Wholeness.
16 Jorgensen and Phillips, Discourse Analysis as a Theory and Method, 1.
17 Ibid., 1.
18 Bevir, “What Is Genealogy?,” 263–75.
19 Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge.
20 Ibid., 38 (emphasis in the original).
21 Ziai, Development Discourse and Global History, 39.
22 Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 41.
23 Ibid.
24 Lewis and Kanji, Non-Governmental Organisations and Development.
25 Srinivas, “Against NGOs?”
26 Madrueno and Tezanos, “Contemporary Development Discourse,” 335.
27 Manji and O’Coill, “Missionary Position.”
28 Osaghae, “Colonialism and Civil Society in Africa,” 238.
29 Ekeh, “Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa.”
30 Osaghae, “Colonialism and Civil Society in Africa,” 238–9.
31 Ibid., 234.
32 Sakue-Collins, “Re-Reading Sankara’s Philosophy,” 181–2.
33 Selvik and Stenslie, Stability and Change in the Modern Middle East, 60.
34 Auyero, Lapegna, and Poma, “Patronage Politics and Contentious Collective Action,” 1.
35 Banks and Hulme, Role of NGOs and Civil Society.
36 Stirrat and Henkel, “Development Gift.”
37 Manji and O’Coill, “Missionary Position.”
38 Ministry of Home Affairs, “Non-Governmental Organisations,” 1–28.
39 Adili, Harambee: The Spirit of Giving, 1–2.
40 Shivji, Silences in NGO Discourse.
41 Ibid., 34.
42 Ibid., 41.
43 NGO Board, Strategic Plan, 19, emphasis not in the original.
44 Office of the Vice President and Ministry of Home Affairs, Sessional Paper No. 1, 11.
45 Ibid., 11.
46 NGO Board, Annual NGO Sector Report, 2019.
47 Ibid., 17.
48 Kelley, Freedom Dreams, 9.
49 Shahani, “I Have a Voice,” 72–3.
50 Ibid., 74.
51 Shivji, Silences in NGO Discourse, 30–3.
52 Cox, “Towards a Post-Hegemonic Conceptualisation,” 173.
53 Ibid., 129.
54 Devetak, “Critical Theory,” 167.
55 Manji and O’Coill, “Missionary Position,” 4.
56 Hattori, “Reconceptualizing Foreign Aid,” 640.
57 Moyo, Dead Aid, 6–7.
58 Ibid., 35.
59 USAID, “USAID Strategy on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance,” 37.
60 Brynen, A Very Political Economy, 188.
61 USAID, “CSO Sustainability Index,” 45.
62 Ibid., 51.
63 Sakue-Collins, “Re-Reading Sankara’s Philosophy.”
64 Author interview with NGO actors/practitioners (AP) and development researchers (DR), January 2017, AP5.
65 Ibid., AP3.
66 Ibid., AP1.
67 Ibid., DR2.
68 Ibid., AP4.
69 Ibid., AP2.
70 Ibid., AP4.
71 Ibid., DR1.
72 Ibid., DR3.
73 Ibid., AP6.
74 Sakue-Collins, “Re-Reading Sankara’s Philosophy,” 185.
75 Author interview, AP3.
76 Ibid., AP1.
77 Ibid., AP5.
78 Ibid., AP4.
79 Ibid., DR1.
80 Ibid., AP1.
81 Ibid., AP7.
82 Ibid., DR3.
83 Ibid., AP2.
84 Ziai, Development Discourse and Global History.
85 Shivji, Silences in NGO Discourse., 34–5.
86 Office of the Vice President and Ministry of Home Affairs, Sessional Paper No. 1, 11.
87 Ibid., 11.
88 Cooper and Packard, “International Development and the Social Sciences.”
89 Ziai, Development Discourse and Global History.
90 Cooper and Packard, “International Development and the Social Sciences,” 348.
91 Sylvester, “Development Studies and Postcolonial Studies,” 705.
92 Ferguson, Anti-Politics Machine.
93 Cooper and Packard, “International Development and the Social Sciences,” 348.
94 Munshi and Willse, “Forward,” xiv.
95 Palast, “Bill Gates, President Bush.”
96 Ahn, “Democratising American Philanthropy,” 72–3.
97 Jones de Almeida, “Radical Social Change,” 191.
98 Manji and O’Coill, “Missionary Position.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Yimovie Sakue-Collins
Yimovie Sakue-Collins is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science, University of Africa, Toru-Orua. He received his BSc Political Science from Bayero University, Kano, a National Diploma in Local Government Administration from Bayelsa State College of Arts and Science, and an MA in International Relations and Oil and Gas Security from Coventry University, United Kingdom. His research interest intersects Political Theory, postcolonial thought, democracy, political communication and participation, policy-making, environmental politics, International Relations, African politics and Pan-Africanism. The core thread of his research is the coincidence of knowledge and practice (i.e. praxis) for the improvement of human condition.