By Mutabazi Sam Stewart
Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Uganda have been roundly criticized as inefficient entities that are mainly interested in accessing resources from western donors to promote individual interests while claiming to work for the cause of the marginalized, the disadvantaged and the poor. The unending syndrome of NGO workshops seminars and conferences have made skeptics to wonder why these institutions have to keep on wasting so much money on meetings that hardly make any impact on the purported populace on whose behalf the NGO’s claim to be working. Uganda is regarded as one of the leading countries with the highest number of NGOs. According to the NGO Board, the body responsible for registering and regulating the activities of NGOs, approximately 100, persons and groups of people express their interest to register an NGO every month. Out of these about half are actually issued certificates. The total number of registered NGOs in the country is not known because majority do not fulfill the requirement of filing annual reports with the NGO Board after registration. A good number of NGOs stop at registration while others operate only for a few years before going into limbo.
Many NGOs are run like small individual business entities without well drafted mandate, vision and mission. They struggle to keep up their operations by diversifying their sources of revenue especially from foreign donors. Their impact is hardly felt but they keep boasting of great successes and achievements. They are run by all sorts of people ranging from well qualified to those without any basic education. They replicate services and they often claim to be what they are not. They are not accountable to anybody because the Board of Directors, the topmost decision making body is either non-existent or is deliberately kept in a weak position so as not to question any discrepancies by the head of organization secretariat who is in most cases “the owner’ of the organization. Members of the Board are usually not highly educated or are not conversant with the dynamics programme implementation and organizational management principles and practices. They rarely audit their books of accounts and neither do they reveal their incomes and expenditures to their members or communities which they claim to work for. The finances (revenue) are erratic and job security for their workers is never guaranteed. They hire and fire workers at will. Most NGOs carry out their activities and programmes by accident rather than by design. They jump at every opportunity without any due consideration to their values, why they exist, what they want to achieve and in what period. For instance, an NGO whose programme revolves around working in the area of HIV/AIDS may find itself applying (soliciting) for funds from a donor to implement activities related to landmine detection in northern Uganda. I have also come across organizations whose official stated objective is to promote health rights doing work related to democracy and good governance. All this is happening because there is very little professionalism when it comes to NGO administration, management and performance appraisal. Anybody can start up an NGO and manage is the way he or she deems fit without adhering to any rules and regulations whatsoever. To most NGOs, the motive to access resources overrides the desire to remain strategic and focused on why the NGO was formed in the first place. An NGO without a clear and distinctive focus is as good as non existent. It can never be effective in its programme implementation. Its programmes and activities are always done in a haphazard manner and the outcome there from is nothing but mediocre services. The focus of any organization can only be derived from its mission, vision and goals which are supposed to guide its growth, expansion and delivery of services to the targeted population. It is a trend that most NGOs have embraced the culture of coining mission objectives for themselves but these often remain on paper. Employees do not fully internalize the importance, let alone the meaning of a mission and vision of their organization. It is one thing to have them and it is another to follow them. Any organization, however fake it may be has capacity to formulate high sounding, well drafted objectives. But it takes a focused team of highly talented and disciplined individuals to transform the goals of an organization from paper to results. The corporate world should help NGOs in Uganda to come up with a development agenda that is workable if the NGO sector is to make any headway as far as sustainable service delivery is concerned. The beginning point is for NGOs to develop well-thought-out policy papers that will guide them during programme implementation. Most importantly however, NGOs must aspire to run their activities in a more systematic way just as the corporate companies are doing, by respecting the rules of the game. They must build their capacities from within by putting in place and respecting various structures before they think about transforming and working for communities.
**The writer is the Head of NGO Management Programme
Cavendish University Uganda (CUU)
Tel: 0772-882547
Email: mutasamste@yahoo.com
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