It’s time for change:
“As noted by participants at the recent Progressive Governance Summit held in London earlier this month, many of the challenges now facing the world are ‘internestic’ – lying at the intersection between ‘the international’ and ‘the domestic’. For aid, this suggests the need to find a new balance between the highly productive and much-needed focus on country-led development and a mounting agenda of regional and global development challenges. The question is whether aid agencies are ready for this in terms of the way they provide incentives for, and monitor, aid delivery; the way in which they engage with recipient countries; the way in which they partner with each other and with the business and philanthropic community; and the way in which they envision the future of bilateral versus multilateral assistance.” – Overseas Development Institute blog.
If I had commented on the above entry, I would have written something similar to this individual:
“There is at present an excellent opportunity for donors to harmonise and minimise the use of parallel systems through a Government led plan to develop Northern Uganda. However, rather than support this process, the vested interests of ff budget bilateral interventions and international NGOs coordinated by UN Agencies are set to scale up their activities, rejecting blindly any efforts to streamline their efforts and align to government systems for sustainable solutions,” commentary on ODI blog.
Having briefly witnessed the pandemonium and inefficiency created by an overload of NGOs working in overlapping sectors, I back the idea of streamlined development projects overseen by a common denominator, someone who can categorize, delegate and – as said above – harmonize the process. I also think this system would enable locals to eventually take on the bulk of these projects in a coherent and less competitive fashion. However, it would also involve a decreased number of Western employees and working NGOs would be deprived of their own agendas and probably some of the motivation for people to donate.
I don’t really get the NGO registry system in Uganda, but I do understand that NGOs register with the government. What happens after that beats me. Perhaps it’s time for internal reforms in the Ugandan government – advised by the UN, which should be the “expert” of development aid and delegation – so that one official local body can work on streamlining the process. While concentrating the flow of donations and aid into the hands of one body might heighten the chance for corruption, I also think it would make it easier to hold one body accountable and allow the international community to gauge the actual effectiveness of a government. However, should corruption set in, lives will be lost. Is a stronger international intervention system needed?