SNAPSHOT OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN GHANA QUESTIONNAIRE TO MEMBERS OF THE AFFINITY GROUP OF NATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS (AGNA)

Transcription

1 SNAPSHOT OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN GHANA QUESTIONNAIRE TO MEMBERS OF THE AFFINITY GROUP OF NATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS (AGNA) June 2015

2 The Affinity Group of National Associations (AGNA) brings together national associations from around the world. Created in 2004, it aims at strengthening national umbrella organisations, fostering greater co-operation across national and regional boundaries to pursue mutual interests. THE CONTENT OF THIS PAPER HAS BEEN PROVIDED BY THE WEST AFRICA CIVIL SOCIETY INSTITUTE (WACSI)

3 THE CONDITIONS OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN GHANA WHAT WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT CHALLENGE FACED BY CIVIL SOCIETY IN YOUR COUNTRY IN 2014/2015? Civil society in Ghana remains diverse with a clear dichotomy between urban- and rural-based CSOs regarding funding and scope of activities. Urban-based organizations tend to have high-calibre professional and administrative staff to support operations, while rural-based organisations usually depend on their founders or directors, as well as volunteers. CSOs still depend largely on foreign donor funding for their activities. Therefore the major challenge CSOs face in Ghana was their inadequate skills and assets to sustain their organisations. Also the threat to their sustainability due to lack of resources mainly human and financial to thrive without project-based donor funding. WHAT WAS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ACHIEVED BY CIVIL SOCIETY IN YOUR COUNTRY IN 2014/2015? Civil Society continued to shape and influence political governance, hold government accountable and democratisation processes in Ghana. A couple of examples are enumerated below. The Civic Forum Initiative (CFI) convened by the Institute for Democratic Governance organized broad based consultations and regional outreach to discuss multi governance reforms to shape electoral processes in Ghana. Highlights of the proposed reforms were the setting up of a multiparty democracy fund to support political parties to develop their manifestoes and policy programs, the election of local governance representatives among others. Organisations like the Centre for Democratic Development, Institute for Economic Affairs and IMANI Ghana also made several contributions and advocacy on issues related to political party financing, corruption and good governance. The African Centre on Energy Policy was very active on shaping and influencing policy issues in the oil and gas sector. 1

4 There was also significant advocacy on gender issues and social protection, which were led by organisations like the Ark Foundation and The Gender Studies and Human Rights and Documentation centre With respect to monitoring and tracking local government expenditure, SEND Ghana undertook significant policy research and advocacy in this sector. In 2014, civil society continued to remain a recognised credible partner in development and continues to hold government accountable. WHAT IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT OPPORTUNITY OR CHALLENGE FOR CIVIL SOCIETY IN YOUR COUNTRY THAT YOU FORSEE IN THE NEAR FUTURE? There is a need for CSOs to rethink their organizational forms and develop structures and alliances, which bring new constituencies committed to their survival and organisations closer. In addition, organisations should create relationships with individual academics, technocrats and professionals. This approach would lead to the provision of technical services, financial support and a wider reach. CSOs also need to spur public mobilisation to support policy advocacy and acquire the skills to do this and also take steps to strengthen organizational accountability and legitimacy. An area of improvement in this regard is the use of social media both to cut down on the costs of organising and also to reach a wider audience, particular younger people. In addition to strengthening their individual organisations, CSOs need to pay attention to the state of their coalitions and networks and the quality of networking and cooperation among them and the health of the various spaces in which they operate. As long as individual CSOs see coalitions as either competitors or of not much practical relevance, and so long as CSOs do not experience the synergies in cooperation with each other, no amount of positive discussions about coalitions is going to make a difference. Therefore CSOs have to be more proactive about how to make coalitions and networks work for their members and for the sector as a whole, drawing on their particular strengths. For example, they could formally assign their coalitions the responsibility for programmes to strengthen their organisational capacities and effectiveness of their members in areas such as strategic management and planning, information systems management, grant proposal writing, project management, performance 2

5 monitoring and management and leadership. Given the urgent nature of organisational sustainability, CSOs need to devote time and thought to this issue. The lack of resources to continue running their organisations could cause a number of them to fold up. Resources remain a challenge to sustainability but there are also other factors such as relevance, legitimacy, credibility of the organisations and civil society accountability that need to be addressed as well. Sustainability of CSOs therefore remains critical and more focus needs to be given to this holistically. In addition, the broadening of the civil society base as professional groups, religious groups, and citizens formations wade into the fray presents a huge opportunity that must be taken advantage of to foster increased citizen participation in development. THE SITUATION OF CIVIL SOCIETY S RESOURCING ARE RESOURCING CONDITIONS FOR CIVIL SOCIETY GETTING BETTER OR WORSE? The financial viability of CSOs continued to decline in There was less funding available to the sector because the World Bank has classified Ghana as a lower middle-income country. Therefore, official development assistance and funding for CSOs continue to decline. Most CSOs in Ghana remain dependent on foreign funding, and there is currently no law or framework that provides incentives for the corporate sector to support the work of the CSO sector. The multidonor funded grant-making body STAR-Ghana remains the most notable funding source for CSOs. Resources from STAR-Ghana are drawn from foreign donor missions that include USAID, the UK Department for International Development (DfID), the EU, and the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA). Funding from STAR-Ghana allows smaller and rural-based CSOs to secure funding to implement activities at the grassroots level. It is difficult for CSOs to acquire volunteer and in-kind support for their activities mainly due to the public perception that CSOs receive huge amounts of funding from donors. On the contrary, participants in CSO activities usually expect CSOs to cover their transportation costs. There are limited local sources of philanthropy from which CSOs can access funding. Telecommunications companies have established foundations that occasionally provide small grants, but these sources are inadequate to meet the needs of CSOs and typically focus only on health and education activities. As consequence 3

6 funds to run organisations and not only projects is suffering major cuts and organisations are suffering from high staff turnover as result of their inability to keep qualified staff fairly remunerated. IS CIVIL SOCIETY EXPLORING NEW STRATEGIES TO DIVERSIFY RESOURCING AND ARE ANY OF THESE PROVING SUCCESSFUL? In terms of the prospects of alternative funding beyond income generation, some CSOs have began to engage government, the private sector, philanthropists, and explore other options like on-line and crowd funding mechanisms, diaspora giving, service delivery and ownership of for-profit subsidiaries. For example organisations like the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) are exploring other innovative resource mobilisation approaches and have been running fee for service programmes and charging for the use of their facilities. WACSI also continues to broaden its non-financial resource base by working in partnership with others and using volunteers. All these have been successful but still form a very small percentage of the institute s budget. Other strategies such as building an endowment fund, working with high net worth individuals and the private sector and sourcing for government funding is yet to be implemented fully and yield impact. Generally, much work would be needed to convince the private sector to consider funding CSOs, either through pooled funding arrangements or directly. This is mainly because of the character of private sector philanthropy, which was at odds with the advocacy focus in CSO work, as well as the desire of private sector organisations to avoid partisan politics. ARE YOU SEEING A MOVE AWAY FROM GRANT FUNDING (AS PROVIDED BY DONORS AND GOVERNMENTS) TO OTHER METHODS OF SUPPORTING CIVIL SOCIETY? For civil society in Ghana, there has been no government funding and so getting that will be one strategy. There will of course have to be some stringent framework guiding this that makes its management independent from government. For some organisations, social entrepreneurship will be a useful strategy of getting additional sources of funding to run their operations Other fund sourcing methods of CSOs in Ghana are using to generate income include micro credit, treasury bills; social housing projects; training consultancies, farming, soap making and food processing. In Ghana, some CSOs, donors and government agencies think income generation projects 4

7 are a threat to the non-profit character, the focus and ethics of CSOs. Others feel that CSOs should focus on selling their skills through training and capacity building activities or on activities, which do not disrupt their work; while the rest had no restrictions regarding what kind of income generation activities CSOs could embark on. Interestingly, some donors do not think self-financing is a good idea. Instead, they argue that organisations could only be sustainable if they become more relevant to their constituencies, who would then fund them. Private sector and state agencies are more positive about CSOs generating funds to support their work. In the light of this, self-financing, partial or full, needs more careful consideration before becomes a dominant approach to financial sustainability among CSOs in Ghana. 5

8 6 Snapshot of civil society in Ghana: Questionnaire to AGNA members