'Donor support to CSOs dwindling'

Donor support to civil society organisations (CSOs) in the country is likely to dwindle by 2022, the year in which the government intends to operationalise the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda.

This is likely to make CSOs inactive and their contribution to the country’s development effort curtailed, since they are largely dependent on foreign donor support.

A development consultant at the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG), Mr Douglas Quartey, disclosed this at a CSO Sustainability Index Dissemination Seminar by IDEG in Accra last Tuesday.

Decline in funding

Mr Quartey said since 2018, when the Ghana Beyond Aid campaign was launched by the government, funding of CSO programmes had declined, thereby limiting their activities.

He mentioned USAID programmes such as the Agricultural Technology Transfer Project, the Agricultural Policy Support Project, Financing Ghanaian Agriculture Project and the Natural Resource Management Project as some of the donor support initiatives that had been terminated and which had affected the operations of some small CSOs and community-based organisations (CBOs).

“CSOs are extremely important; they play critical roles in the development of nations, and so any discussion on their sustenance deserves attention. In spite of everything, there should be alternative resources to sustain us in the context of this changing aid architecture,” he said.

Effect

A Research Fellow at IDEG, Dr Emmanuel Ayisi, also said low inflow of aid would limit IDEG’s charity interventions, which were one of their core mandates.

“When we declare a Ghana Beyond Aid, it clearly means that we do not want any support, and with that we need to re-orientate Ghana to be self-sustaining by developing on its own resources. This will affect CSOs in the sense that we will not be able to leverage international funds anymore,” he added.

According to him, some CSOs were faced with difficulties in building institutional capacity and infrastructure to sustain their programmes.

Dr Ayisi added that CSOs would also struggle to recruit and pay competitive emoluments to regular and experienced staff, saying that would eventually affect quality of work.

“Certainly, when we fully roll out the agenda, aid will reduce and also affect the sustainability of CSOs in Ghana. As we are experiencing already, organisations are struggling to generate income and mobilise financial resources for their programmes,” he said.

Collaborations

The research fellow said there was the need for more engagements to address the situation before it escalated.

He urged CSOs to find alternative means of funding their programmes.

“That will include joining forces and also hedging financial resources, developing new business approaches, building credibility and also engaging in more consultancies,” Dr Ayisi added.

He further asked CSOs to build alliances for stronger network to serve and promote their interest, saying that “if we continue to act as smaller individual groups, we will not be able to achieve our mission”.