The Aid Chain: Coercion and Commitment in Development NGOs

The Aid Chain explores the role of funding conditions in shaping co-operation and resistance as aid moves from donors, to NGOs, to local communities. Significant proportions of aid flow through the non-governmental sector but questions are increasingly being asked about the role of NGOs and whether they can deliver on their ambitious claims. This study examines whether the existing aid processes widely used by donors and NGOs are effective in tackling poverty and exclusion. Findings from fieldwork in Uganda, South Africa and the UK are used to show how the fast changing aid sector has, in the context of a dynamic policy environment, encouraged the mainstreaming of a managerial approach that does not admit of any analysis of power relations or cultural diversity. This increasing definition of the roles of NGOs as essentially technical, limits the extent of the very development that the organizations were initially established to promote.

Tina Wallace is an independent development consultant who has specialized in management and gender issues. She has studied and taught in Africa and Europe and has extensive NGO experience. She is now based in the UK, and teaches at Oxford Brookes University.

Lisa Bornstein worked for many years at the University of Kwa Zulu Natal, where she was head of the SA research, and she is now teaching and researching at the University of McGill in Canada. She specializes in planning and development issues.

Jennifer Chapman is currently working freelance, after three years heading an action research program for ActionAid on the evaluation of advocacy work by development NGOs. She has extensive research and practical experience with NGOs and is currently developing a manual on understanding and learning from advocacy and policy work.