The Role of Local Organizations in Third World Development: Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia (review)

Book Reviews 135 but never really developed. We learn, for example, that women volunteered/were volunteered? to go and serve the women of the holy households (93). While not participating directly in the ceremonies, they could attend as observers and make gifts to the religious leaders (134) or by composing songs of praise (167). Furthermore several holy women are mentioned in their own right, though with few further details. Some maps would clarify the text. Many of the religious figures traveled widely, from country to country and from city to rural village in perambulations that are sometimes hard to visualize without a map. On the other hand, the various diagrams and genealogies found throughout the book are very helpful. Finally, it is a pity that the editors allowed several errors to mar the final product. These include irritating mistakes of grammar (e.g., 47) and punctuation (15), as well as typographic errors (most glaringly on 169-171) which could easily have been avoided. Susan M. Kenyon Butler University The Role ofLocal Organizations in Third World Development: Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia Matthias Schmale Brookfield, Vt.: Avebury, 1993. Pp. xiii, 257. Schmale's monograph appears to be a published version of his dissertation which provides a modest contribution to the growing literature on Non— Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Africa. However, its ambitious attempt to cover three different organizational structures in three different countries (Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia), results in a disappointing analysis and very little empirical data. The author was able to spend 15 months in Tanzania assessing the work of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT), three and a half months in Zimbabwe studying the Lutheran Development Service in Zimbabwe, and six weeks in Ethiopia looking at the Relief Organization for Ethiopia (ROFE). A comparison of the two Lutheran organizations would have been interesting enough, especially since a number of studies exist which look at both the development of the Lutheran Church in Africa, and their relief and development activities. Furthermore, from a 136 Book Reviews comparative perspective it is perplexing why the author did not look at the relief and development work of the Mekene Yesus Church in Ethiopia which has a far longer history. Instead he chose the ROFE which, though interesting in its own right, is nevertheless a secular organization initially started by the supporters of the EPRP outside of Ethiopia. Readers of this journal will be disappointed by the minimal amount of coverage devoted to the ROFE's activities in the last two chapters of the book. The analysis begins with a somewhat convoluted review of Ethiopian history using a dense and clumsy mode of production analysis, and then dissolves into a brief description of the activities of ROFE as reported to the author by various members of the organization. The Role ofLocal Organizations in Third World Development does raise some interesting issues of how NGOs can succeed in mobilizing both local action and implement grassroots initiatives. Additionally, it demonstrates how local organizations are enhanced or constrained by the policies of the state and the history of specific communities within the state. Lastly, what is of interest in both the Tanzanian and Zimbabwean cases is how externally based mission organizations evolved into locally based indigenous organizations. A major problem throughout the book is that it is hard to readvisually and substantively. Visually, in the way it has been formatted and printed, it appears to be little more than a bound dissertation printed in Courier type-face; substantively, it is difficult to grasp its theoretical orientation. It would have been useful to have the original citations as they would be more useful for scholars and researchers. In short, as a book on the work of NGOs it provides some interesting information and data. For someone looking for analysis of Ethiopian development organizations it is very disappointing, thus leaving the terrain wide open for future research. Ethiopia has an exceptional variety of all types of NGOs ranging from those with external roots, to those developed within the exiled refugee communities, to those developed by the indigenous elite, to the more traditional community-based local institutions. One hopes the new climate of freedom in Ethiopia can permit more sophisticated analysis...