“Dancing to the Tune of the Donor”: Donor Funding and Local Implementation of Initiatives to Assist Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children in Uganda, 1986 – 2011

Abstract

This study is an inquiry into the exercise of power in the mainstream development apparatus, drawing from the case example of the dynamics among local and foreign organizations and agencies working to assist orphans and other vulnerable children (OVC) in Uganda during the period 1986 to 2011. It examines the initiatives of locally-founded non-governmental organizations (NGOs), local chapters of international NGOs (INGO), and the government of Uganda to attend to the physical, social, and emotional needs of OVC (through the provision of food, education, health care, housing, and social support). This overall “response” to OVC illustrates the influences of donor-recipient relations of power and mainstream development discourse and practices in shaping governmental and non-governmental initiatives. Drawing from Michel Foucault’s theory of governmentality, the study considers donor rules, regulations, and discursive practices in relation to NGO practices in a context of international development aid, conceptualizing these regulations and practices as illustrative of technologies of power and domination and technologies of the self. Through a historical analysis, it contextualizes, periodizes, and interprets the dynamics of the responses to the needs of OVC on iii the part of the various players involved. It traces the emergence and consolidation of the concepts of human rights, child rights, and community participation within mainstream development discourse from World War II until the present to illustrate how this discourse plays out in the field of OVC initiatives in Uganda. The analysis suggests that donor conditions are constituted and perpetuated not through hegemonic control over funding recipients but through often insidious power dynamics reflected in everyday practices, interactions, and discourse. This implies active participation on the part of NGOs in perpetuating as well as resisting the relations of power that push them to attend to donor needs and requirements. The study finds that local representatives of NGOs (small and large, locally- and foreign-founded and managed) are beginning to alter the character of heavily donor-influenced OVC initiatives in Uganda through resisting, tweaking, and interpreting donor rules, regulations, and discourses to meet their own needs. Their dance “to the tune of the donor”, as NGO and government agency representatives termed it, is more complex than simply following the donors’ lead, and necessitates NGOs’ continuous participation and resistance. Although not revolutionary in the sense of concerted action against a powerful other, particularly small locally-founded NGOs’ resistance has the potential to reorient the mainstream development apparatus that dominates contemporary efforts to assist OVC in Uganda.