Significant proportions of aid already 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 conditionality and mutual commitment between international aid donors and recipient NGOs, North and South.

Fieldwork and case study material from Uganda and South Africa are used to support the authors’ contention that 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--essentially technical-- definition of the roles of NGOs has worked to limit the extent of the very development that the organizations were initially established to promote.

Table of Contents:

Preface; Acknowledgements; Figures, Tables and Boxes; About the Authors; Acronyms; 1) Introduction; 2) The Changing Context for the Work of Development NGOs; 3) The Management of Development; 4) The Major UK Donors and the Flow of Aid Through the NGO Sector; 5) The NGO Context in Uganda and South Africa; 6) Normative Conditions: Rational Management of the Aid Chain; 7) The Ties That Bind; 8) Relationships: Partnership, Power and Participation; 9) Chains of Influence in South Africa; 10) Listening to the Past and Building a New Future; Appendix: Organisations Interviewed for the Mid-Level Survey of NGO-Donor Relations in South African and Uganda; References: Websites; Index.