And just as we have seen an unprecedented centralisation and concentration of capital globally, so we are seeing a similar process amongst development NGOs with ever larger global enterprises such as Oxfam, SCF, ActionAid, Care, World Vision, to name but a few, being formed with every larger volumes of funds. Many of these Northern aid agencies have now set up offices in Africa so as to be perceived as organisations of the South – as if geographic location changed anything. They now have the power to do deals directly with African governments and to speak on behalf of ‘civil society’. Backed with resources far exceeding those of local organisations, they are able to play the missionary role to a far greater extent than before. They offer no challenge to the neoliberal agenda – indeed, their income depends on not contesting that ideology. Instead, many of them collude with the multinationals by giving a ‘progressive’ cover to them through programmes of ‘corporate social responsibility’: for example, several Canadian NGOs have been given huge sums for social programmes such as building schools and health centres in areas where extractive industries are mining oil or other mineral resources while destroying the environment. Their silence on the role of these extractive industries is not hard to understand. If the missionaries of the past were part of the machinery of colonial domination, today’s missionaries are part of the machinery of exploitation by multinational corporations and finance capital. In that sense, then, I think the situation is worse than before. Firoze Manji
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 01:51:15 +0000
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