One of the consequences of relying on NGOs through which donors channel their handouts is the relegation of expert advice to irrelevance. At Godobjiraan village in Nugaal, elders have looked askance at the plan to cut more than 8000 trees to stabilise sand dunes. More trees will stabilise sand dunes so let us plant more trees, elders told Puntland Ministry of Environment officials and NGO workers who floated the idea to cut trees. What is unclear is whether Puntland State government has already secured funds from a donor country or a supranational entity such as the EU to fight sand dunes.
The silence of Puntland State government over the Environment Ministry’s proposal reflects the success of NGOs to formulate and implement environmental policies that could speed up desertification.
As the Federal Member State that fervently defends the Somali federal system Puntland State sets an unenviable example about environmental policies in a country that has yet to prepare itself for the vagaries of climate change. Somali NGOs are vehicles for self-enrichment run by groups linked with sub-national entities. NGOs align their plans with donors’ goals. State collapse in Somalia gave NGOs the privilege to operate as a wing of the civil society — there is no civil society in Somalia in the Eurocentric sense of the phrase.
In a country recovering from state collapse NGOs develop into bottlenecks in institution-building endeavours, become beholden to and mislead political authorities. Their track record of dealing with donors undermines formulating policies based on expertise. Corruption or administrative inadequacies at federal state levels boost donors’ agenda to undermine public organisations. Most donors contract NGOs to implement projects. This policy provides NGOs with an opportunity to develop an institutional memory and expertise at the expense of public organisations. It is one of the ways to keep third world countries in state of perpetual underdevelopment. In such a situation public organisations become a tool for NGOs to formulate and implement policies that wreak havoc in the environment.
Professor Issa Shivji, a Tanzanian constitutional law expert, alerted us to the futility and risks of African NGOs: “…the transformation from a colonial subject society to a bourgeois society in Africa is incomplete, stunted and distorted. We have the continued domination of imperialism – reproduction of the colonial mode – in a different form, currently labelled globalisation or neoliberalism. Within this context, NGOs are neither a third sector, nor independent of the state. Rather, they are inextricably imbricated in the neoliberal offensive, which follows on the heels of the crisis of the national project. Unless there is awareness on the part of the NGOs of this fundamental moment in the struggle between imperialism and nationalism, they end up playing the role of ideological and organisational foot soldiers of imperialism…”
Let us hope Puntland will blaze the trail to release public organisations from the grip of NGOs before it is too late.
Adan M. Dawad
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