Kenya is home to the United Nations' main African headquarters and hundreds of international non-governmental organizations. The NGO sector is enormous. International NGOs work in health, education, environment, governance, development. Kenyan NGOs partner with international NGOs or work independently.
The development industry that grew up around these organizations is substantial. It generates jobs, brings foreign currency, and provides services that the state does not. But it also produces dependencies and distortions.
The presence of international NGOs can mean that local priorities are shaped by what international donors fund rather than by community-defined needs. Health programs might prioritize diseases that international funders care about rather than diseases that communities face. Education programs might be designed to fit international funding requirements rather than local needs.
The NGO sector also creates a particular kind of professional class: Kenyans who work for international organizations, speak English fluently, navigate international bureaucracies. This class has genuine skills and does genuine work. But it is also privileged and sometimes alienated from the communities it serves.
The patronage that flows from the NGO sector goes primarily to urban areas and to people connected to these organizations. Rural areas and communities that do not interface with NGOs do not benefit. The NGO complex, despite its development rhetoric, often reproduces inequality by concentrating resources in networks of educated elites.
The expatriate presence that accompanies the NGO complex also creates a particular dynamic. International staff, often paid far more than Kenyan colleagues, live in enclaves, send their children to international schools, create bubbles of Western culture. This expatriate culture can reinforce the sense that development requires foreign expertise and foreign models rather than building on Kenyan knowledge and capacity.
The NGO complex is not malign. Much genuine work happens. But the legacy is of an external development industry that has come to mediate Kenya's relationship to development and that brings both resources and dependencies, both help and distortion.
See Also
- The NGO Economy
- The Debt Legacy
- The State Fragility Legacy
- Cold War in Kenya Legacy
- Free Primary Education Impact