NGOs in Africa must be seen in their political and historical context. Richmond and Carey acknowledge that “the status of international NGOs has . . . been controversial”. American Professor Steven J. Klees has noted that “Rather than contributing to sustainable poverty alleviation, NGOs . . . have, at a systemic level contributed to sustaining poverty. Maintaining poverty and inequality is an integral part of the new and old policy agenda of capitalism. The NGO phenomenon has supported this agenda most strongly by contributing to the delegitimation of the State.” There have also been longstanding complaints that international NGOs ignore local knowledge and contexts and poach the best staff from local groups. There is also little doubt now that the unprecedented growth in both international and national NGOs has come with strings attached. Writing in 1999, the American academic Professor James Petras observed that “Politically the NGOs fit into the new thinking of imperialist strategists.” Michael Edwards and David Hulme have pointed out that NGOs have become contractors implementing the funder’s agenda within the countries in which they are involved.

The wide-ranging questions surrounding NGOs and “civil society” are not just Africa-specific. The relationship between governments, foreign entities and funding sources, NGOs and “civil society” is one such question. The issue is truly international in scale.

Criticism of Internationally-funded NGOs has covered the full spectrum from being instruments of western foreign policy, scandal-ridden sex tourists to being “parasites of the poor”. Western-funded NGOs have been described as neoliberal Trojan horses and “a new type of cultural and economic colonialism”. It is also the case that many of those NGOs most vocal that international human rights laws must apply to corporations and governments have themselves been remarkably reluctant to see it applied to themselves. NGOs have also frequently failed to protect or respect the rights and welfare of children, women, and vulnerable populations such as refugees and internally displaced people with whom they work. Scandals involving Save the Children and Oxfam have shown that self-regulation for NGOs is insufficient and ineffective. British legislators have accused some NGOs of “complacency verging on complicity” in responding to multiple sexual abuse scandals involving their international and local staff.