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NGO leadership not doing enough to build capacity within their organisations
Munetsi Hini
February 09, 2005

Since the emergence of the ‘third sector’ civil society sector in most developing countries around the world, development work has improved and a lot of positives can be identified in sectors such as health, education, agriculture and human rights just to mention a few. The majority of these organisations are extensions of northern international humanitarian organisations and some are new having been formed and founded by locals in the respective countries. The noble idea behind these institutions being formed was to partner governments in development. Some have grown into big institutions with systems in place and some have remained a one-man band run along family lines.

A functional CSO has systems in place and are bigger than their founders. They do not die with their founder/s. Current NGO leadership is not doing enough to build capacity within their organisations to ensure continuity when they retire or die. They do not have training programmes or impart knowledge to their juniors. They do not have internships, attachments, understudies, and secondments. There are various reasons for this but the most disheartening in most organisations is the attitude of these leaders. They do not envisage the survival of their organizations after them. They kill their noble ideas.

Donor dependent salaries within CSOs have caused leaders within NGOs to jump on every trip. Donors are not keen on funding institutional support to most southern NGOs to such an extent that senior NGO personnel are using trip allowances (per diems) to attend any meetings, seminars, conferences to supplement their meager salaries, thereby killing capacity building measures intended for their juniors. Most of them have became workshop tourists, some have formed travel agents to do their travel bookings, some have won free flights from airlines for having accumulated so much mileage, some move around with organizational check books in their pockets, etc.

Important meetings are been rescheduled because they have to attend this and that meeting. Organizational plans and deadlines are being missed because they are way and cannot be implemented when they are away. They lock their offices until they return and no one can access important organizational emails and no one can use their organizational cars while they are away.

But surprisingly, most of the papers they present at these meetings are prepared by their juniors. The leaders go to meetings where they meet juniors/interns from northern NGOs who to some extent are not as bright as their own juniors at home. Juniors in the North have resources to organize meetings to fulfill their academic qualifications and invite senior officials from the southern NGOs to solicit information. Take any participant list from any meeting/workshop/conference organized by northern NGOs and the reality is that half of the participants from the North are juniors within their organization and all participants from southern NGOs are seniors. The northerners have mastered this to such an extent that they will always be selective as to who should attend their meetings from selected organisations. You will find out that through out the year the same person will be invited throughout the year to discuss the same issues. If that person is not there, any secondment wont be accepted. The way donors undermine our government sovereignty is the same way these northern NGOs some which happen to be our donors undermine our CSOs sovereignty, besides their conditions attached to their monies, reporting and areas of funding.

Like a ‘tsunami’ the NGO leadership is killing the sector by not grooming future leaders. Donors are also to blame for they pursue their interests with such damage to the sector. Frustrated juniors within the sector leave for the west. Who can stop this rot? Is it the NGO Bill or the change of attitude by the current NGO leadership.

Munetsi Hini can be contacted by email at munetsi@yahoo.com

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