Abstract
Shivji draws on his experience as both observer and participant of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Tanzania to outline a critique of NGO practice in the political and moral economy of African development. Shivji acknowledges that he is working ‘on a canvas of broad strokes’, but the issues he identifies are important for political and social practices across sites, scales and forms.
The argument opens with a presentation of Africa’s colonial history and the coercive processes of extraction, domination and underdevelopment which continue into the present. He then outlines three failures of the liberation project in Africa: the national territorial state versus pan-Africanism; a developmental versus a democratic state; and nationalism versus imperialism. This is the context for his consideration of NGOs as non-state actors caught up in an imperial project. His observation that civil society in general is not an autonomous ‘third sector’ but a realm of social conflict still bears repeating.
The silences in NGO discourse that Shivji identifies are:
An ‘activist’ mentality and an anti-theoretical, short-termist, donor-led agenda
An anti-historical perspective
A non-conflictual view of social change
A non-political approach but willingness to become involved in policy making.
I agree that these are significant problems for any organization aiming at social change as I concur with Shivji’s concerns about the direction and limitations of NGO accountability and theoretical perspective. I also agree with his conclusions about ‘globalization’ as a form of imperialism, the importance of bottom–up, democratic and participatory practices, the dangers of statism and chauvinism, the impossibility of neutrality and the importance of an integrated auto-critique and praxis.
It would be helpful if Shivji made it plainer the extension or definition of his use of ‘NGO’: does this refer to international (development, human rights, consultancy?), national, local, campaigning, service-delivery organisations, etc. Ironically the one source that Shivja quotes to substantiate his assertion that ‘NGO leaders’ do not engage in critical analysis is from a book of research published by Oxfam (Murphy, 2000).
The apparent lack of clarity over what an NGO is also suggests a lack of clarity over what an NGO can be. Given his Gramscian view of civil society, and his rhetoric about NGOs as the footsoldiers of neoliberalism, Shivji still seems to have a certain faith in the possibility and desirability of reforming NGOs.
While the identification of NGOs structural limitations is fair and worth making, I would look forward to a more detailed, case specific analysis of the relationship of NGO practice to development, neoliberalization and the state, as in the case studies in Shivji’s 2002 paper, Chatterjee (2006), Englund (2006), Hopgood (2006), or Bayat (1997).