HomeWhen NGOs take on a country or a space, more often than not, they have the purest of intentions. The organizations have seen that there is a group of people who are suffering and they want to help.
However, like parents spoil a child, sometimes NGOs do the same and end up leaving a place and a population worse than they found it. How so?
A Kelogg research article reveals that in developing countries such as Uganda, they noted that infant mortality rates kept on soaring. This is despite the fact that there are many NGOs in the villages who are trying to offer healthcare for free to the villagers.
The research done by Prof. Nancy Qian and Erika Deserrano revealed that government health workers left government work and worked for those NGOs which paid much more.
Later on the local governments would stop funding these areas and instead channel these scarce resources into other areas. Normally, the government would work with volunteer health workers to help these underserved people access healthcare. They would do this by adopting a door-to-door approach.
NGOs also came into the villages and do the same. The only difference was that NGOs would pay the volunteers. But as much as they were offering to help villagers access healthcare, they wouldn’t improve the services because that’s the work of the country/local governments.
In Kenya, there are more than 511 NGOs in Kibera slums for instance according to the Rotary Peace Center. Journalist Linh Vo wrote an explosive piece called “When kindness kills development”. Vo examined why Kibera has remained as dilapidated as it has ever been for more than 30 years. Yet the number of NGOs kept on increasing in number.
The data reveals that in 2000 there were roughly 200 NGOs but by 2019, the number had more than doubled. Kibera is a 2.5 km2 area with a population of approximately 1 million people. However, the situation among the residents of these slums never changes.
What is the issue?
Two issues can be picked.
First, the NGOs and Community-Based-Organizations (CBOs) – not all of them though- were “enablers of poverty”. With or without knowing it, they created the dependency syndrome. Vo says that every time the NGOs would invite the community in different forums, they would give them sitting allowances and a few dollars for attending the meeting. During these meetings, they would also provide free lunch.
Villagers would happily attend these meetings for the money and the food but end up changing nothing. Why? If they look like they’re improving then these supplies will be cut off and they can’t have that. These organizations would also give free clothing and other things.
On the other side of the aisle, NGOs benefited from the misfortunes of the less fortunate. Linh writes that a lot of funds were absorbed as administration costs and different expatriates made a life in Kenya as “career expats”.
As long as they keep posting photos of these poor children and women, funds kept flowing. Secondly, in 2014 and 2015 the NGO coordination board of Kenya threatened to deregister more than 900 NGOs because of not being transparent with their finances.
Allegedly, there are two organizations that were associated with “Al Shabaab” a terrorist organization.
It’s time that NGOs made it their mission to bring a notable difference and stop creating a dependence syndrome. One of the solutions that Prof. Qian and Desserano gave was recommending that NGOs work hand in hand with the government at the grassroots level.
The local governments should show where there are gaps so that the NGOs can fill them. NGOs should avoid duplicating government services.
Secondly, there should be data-led, data-inspired solutions and interventions. “the governments aren’t collecting data on where their own health workers are. Organizations that have some sway, like the World Bank, need to encourage the collection of data like this on a large scale in poor countries,” writes Prof. Qian.
