Critical Current & Key Authors: Postcolonial thought (Achille Mbembe, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said) and its extension in decolonial studies (Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Walter Mignolo, Aníbal Quijano). These currents analyze the persistence of power structures, knowledge systems, and imaginaries inherited from colonization in the contemporary world.
Central Postulate / Argument: Current North-South relations, including development aid and NGO funding, are not neutral but deeply embedded in the “coloniality of power.” The global financial architecture, aid conditionalities, thematic priorities, and even the conceptual frameworks used (development, good governance, etc.) perpetuate forms of economic, political, and epistemic domination (imposition of a way of seeing the world) of the North over the South.
APPLICATION / RELEVANCE FOR THE AUTONOMY OF AFRICAN NGOs: #
- Structural Dependence & Donor Neocolonialism: The dependence of African NGOs is not a simple technical contingency manageable by strategies (RDT), but a structural state inherited and maintained. Conditionalities (first those of the Structural Adjustment Programs – SAPs – of the 1980s and 1990s, which often weakened states and paved the way for externally funded NGOs, then current political, governance, or thematic conditionalities) shape the space for action of NGOs. Donor priorities often reflect their own interests (geopolitical, economic, ideological – neocolonialism under the guise of aid) rather than an endogenous agenda, limiting real autonomy to a mere margin of execution.
- Critique of “Managed” Autonomy: The notion of autonomy promoted in managerial discourses can be seen as an illusion or a tool of control: technical and managerial autonomy is granted on condition of remaining within the ideological and programmatic framework defined by the North.
Key Concepts / Illustrations: Coloniality of power/knowledge/being, Neocolonialism, Structural dependence, Conditionalities, Extroversion, Governmentality (in the Foucauldian sense, applied to aid), Epistemicide (destruction of local knowledge).
Illustration: The imposition of “professional” NGO models and complex monitoring and evaluation systems (logical framework, quantitative indicators) that marginalize local knowledge and organizational methods. The aid agenda that quickly shifts from one priority to another (HIV, then microfinance, then climate, etc.) according to the concerns of the North.
IMPLICATIONS / CONFRONTATION WITH DOMINANT THEORIES: #
- Vs RDT/Agency/Institutional: These critical theories do not deny the usefulness of dependency management or legitimacy-seeking strategies, but they resituate them within a framework of structural domination. They suggest that these strategies could be nothing more than adaptations or forms of resistance within the neocolonial system, without fundamentally challenging it.
- They question the apparent neutrality of managerial analysis tools and invite us to analyze the discourse of donors and NGOs with a critical eye (who defines the terms? In whose interest?).
- They push us to consider more radical forms of autonomy, based on epistemic rupture and the reappropriation of the agenda by actors in the South.
