The best outcome of the ECA conference on African women will be "concrete actions on the ground, and the means to finance them," says Ms. Pauline Biyong, an activist on the non-governmental organization (NGO) scene in Africa.
Photo: Nii K. Bentsi-Enchill
Among other things, Ms. Biyong is president of the League for Women's and Children's Education in Cameroon, and founder of the Cameroonian Federation of Women's Associations. She is also the publisher of La Cité, a newspaper that aims to raise consciousness on gender and other development issues and monitors the progress of women in public life. The front-page editorial of the April 1988 edition is titled "Abus de confiance" (Betrayal of trust). It argues that Cameroon's women have received far less than was promised during the 1997 elections.
A firm believer in the progressive potential of NGOs, Ms. Biyong stresses the importance of having stronger NGOs at a time when "the disengagement of the state is occurring without any proper structures and processes to see through the transition." But while "civil society" is the latest fashion, she says, "if you look hard at the [NGO] scene, things are pretty catastrophic."
In the first place, she says, many people in these NGOs need training in basic management and accounting skills. With all the rules and conditions they have to observe in their relations with external or domestic agencies, "it's like asking somebody to write when they have never been to school." Also, NGOs still have no legal status in some countries. "It's one thing to go and sign conventions abroad, but quite another when at home, a government is still wary of NGOs."
According to Ms. Biyong, NGO federations and networks are not working all that well, and uses her own Cameroonian Federation of Women's Associations as an example. "I spent two years of my life on this, with little success. Out of 85 associations, we could not really strengthen even two or three." That federation still exists, she says. But "how can you have a strong chain with weak links?"
Ms. Biyong feels it would be better for some NGOs to develop their strengths, before coming together in a network. She prefers this to the "trawling and dredging that goes on now," with people competing for donor funding.
"The deplorable thing we are now seeing is people setting up NGOs according to donor programmes. If the current thing is AIDS, then our people go there. If it's the environment, then people go there." She insists that there are others who share her views, but she understands their silence. "Things are tough and people (including those who work for NGOs) are hungry...."
She urges NGOs to develop their own agenda and advises caution with donors since their objectives are not necessarily those of African countries or African NGOs. She also contrasts the "first-class" conditions in which many development officials operate with the low levels of funding they give to NGOs that are active on the ground, as well as the tight conditions on its use. Resolute, Ms. Biyong says she will just continue to argue for more tangible support at national and international level for work at the grassroots, "where it is really needed."
