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  • The NGO Factor in Africa: The Case of Arrested Development in Kenya
  • Elinami Swai
Maurice, Amutabi N. 2006. The NGO Factor in Africa: The Case of Arrested Development in Kenya. New York: Routledge. Pp. vii, 238. $84.90 (cloth).

The contribution of The NGO Factor in Africa lies in its ordinariness and the simple but critical manner in which it presents the work of NGOs in Africa from the point of view of the masses. Maurice Amutabi's primary purpose is to point to the problems that NGOs have created in Kenya, exposing NGO paradoxes, ambiguities and suspicions held against them. It examines the place of NGOs as colonial tools in Africa, questioning previous assertions about their neutrality. The author faults assertions that have presented NGOs as undifferentiated and homogenous, faultless and pure. Using the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) and its work in Kenya as a case study, Amutabi problematizes the activities of RF in agriculture, education and health sectors, demonstrating that these activities have not only facilitated but also undermined development efforts in Kenya.

The seven chapters in this book are arranged thematically and chronologically. They range in concentration from a critique of the activities of NGOs in Africa to the cultural, social and economic imperialism of their activities, through what Amutabi terms "philanthrocracy" (p. xxiii). Philanthrocracy is a complex process through which NGOs seek to dominate their constituents and other stakeholders, in development. Chapters one to four provide theoretical thrusts to the background of Kenya's development history.

In the first chapter, Amutabi illustrates a paradoxical duality of the activities of NGOs in Kenya, showing their two faces: one as agents of development, and another, as agents of external dominance. He shows how NGOs are variously used by governments and international institutions of development to link local communities to global social and economic movements in order to exploit them. Using a neoliberal framework Amutabi casts NGO projects as sites where communities are created or altered through hegemonic tendencies, such as "forms" or "structures" of globalization (p. 29).

In the second chapter, Amutabi examines the value and motives of NGOS, with a critical view of imperial and capital interests, and argues that despite many years of working in Kenya and other parts of Africa, only a few cases can be seen to bear the fruits of "genuine development," such as financing higher education. This chapter suggests that the activities of NGOs in Kenya have allowed them a position of benevolence, interested only in assisting the poor, and not to help them solve their problems.

In the third chapter, Amutabi looks into the works of early missionaries and philanthropists to Africa and how these works shaped the domestic economic, political and social institutions. In this chapter, Amutabi provides a background to the Rockefeller Foundation by showing its growth worldwide and its activities in Kenya. He examines the activities of the Rockefeller Foundation in sectors such as health, education, agriculture and water development, arguing that, these activities, rather than being agents of development, were used to initiate Kenya ". . . in global politics [End Page 109] and economics," (p. 79), for exploitation by the North. Amutabi argues that the complexities of drastic reforms and restructuring of social, economic and political activities brought about by colonial, missionaries and philanthropies have transformed the social structure from communal to that of ". . . binary oppositional structures" (p. 107), which ". . . continued to influence and guide development, away from social welfare to capitalism" (p. 107).

In chapter four, he shows how NGO terms such as "field" are loaded with patronizing, "Othering" tendencies, replete with prejudiced binaries of "us" versus "them," "backward" versus "developed," which influence their development. In this chapter, he states that NGOs reflect the culture, values and power of imperial powers, reproducing those values in their language, activities, recruitment, and in the overall goals of their mission. He thinks that the work of these NGOs has undermined previous subsistence economic processes that worked for Africans in the past, and which have been violated, undermined and pushed aside, making many people vulnerable to famine and poverty.

Amutabi takes the readers to the various RF projects in Kenya in chapter five and six. Here he shows the various power...

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