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Abstract
The NGO sector has been widely criticised for their failure to demonstrate the ideals of partnership in practice, especially between INGOs and their local NGOs in developing countries. Previous literature asserts that conventional partnership often fails to demonstrate its ideals in practice because INGO donors wield enormous power and influence over their local NGO partners because of their control over funds. Using face-to-face interview, focus group discussion, participant observation and documents analysis, firstly, this paper investigates whether ActionAid Nigeria and its local NGO partners share a common understanding of the ideals of partnership? Secondly, it investigates whether these partnership ideals are actually demonstrated in practice. Empirical observations have shown that there is a common understanding of the key principles and values of partnership between the INGO donor and their local partners in Nigeria. In addition, the findings suggest ActionAid Nigeria and its local NGO partners are striving to demonstrate these ideals in practice. Also, the study suggests that the INGO donor and its local NGO partners are willing to promote mutual accountability in their partnership engagements to promote concrete changes in the lives of the beneficiaries of their work.
Notes on contributors
Babatunde Olawoore recently completed his PhD studies with speciality in International Studies and Development at the School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom. The PhD data gathering was carried out in North-Central and South-Western regions of Nigeria.
Palash Kamruzzaman is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Development at the University of South Wales, UK. He has demonstrated interests and published in the areas of participation in policy-making, national development experts (NDEs) and aid ethnographies, international trading of political capital and high-level expertise, civil society, extreme poverty and global development goals.
Notes
1 Justice Development and Peace Commission (JDPC) is another national NGO founded and mainly funded by the Catholic Church,. Each Catholic Diocese in Nigeria has its local JDPC and this study focuses on partnership between AAN and Ondo State JDPC.
2 Centre for Community Empowerment and Poverty Eradication (CCEPE) is a local NGO based in Ilorin, Kwara State in the North-Central Nigeria.
3 While such a view is not very uncommon in Nigeria, we the authors, however, would like to state clearly that this also represents a somewhat oversimplified criticism. As, in our experience, it is also clear that there are a good number of examples where statement of such kind would be incorrect.
4 These acronyms highlight that NGOs are not a homogenous category. Different NGOs have variable interests which may have diverse implications in realising the theoretical ideals of partnership in practice.
5 Elbers and Schulpen (Citation2013) insist that INGO-local NGO partnerships are often unequal because the former are often advantaged due to their access to funds and in most cases the latter act as sub-contractors.
6 There are increasing calls for INGOs to scale-up accountability to the beneficiaries of their work, particularly to their local NGO partners (BOND, Citation2015; Fowlers, Citation2015; Naidoo, Citation2004; Kilby, Citation2006).
7 This is cognate to the first objective of this study whether AAN and its partner NGOs in Nigeria share a common understanding of partnership.
8 This coheres with the second objective of this study in revealing in this particular case whether theoretical ideals of partnership are manifested in practice.
9 While the actual numbers of NGOs and INGOs working in Nigeria are slippery, but it is estimated that by 2009 there were many thousands involving millions of paid staff as well as volunteers (Dibie and Dibie cited in Smith, Citation2010).
10 The main emerging themes were notion of equality, accountability, respect, dominance, and mutual learning within partnership.
11 Some of the AAN’s local partners are membership-based organisations and have ways of raising funds from their members. For example, JDPC is a Catholic organisation and funded by the church in the dioceses. A participant from the intermediate organisation claimed that donations from the members of different Catholic Church in the area form the main source of funds for their work at the grass-roots, which compensated for the limited funding from foreign official and private international and local donors. He claimed that their access to alternative sources of funding enhance their power and influence in the engagements with ActionAid and their CBO partners.