Tanzania-NGOs African NGOs Challenged to Change their Negative Public Image

By George Mwangi
Associated Press Writer

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP)—Non-governmental organizations in Africa should work to improve their public image so they are no longer seen as groups of individuals out to serve their own interests, an NGO network official said Monday. "They (the public) just don't have the awareness that it takes to understand why you need a strong citizen voice in a country to create economic development, growth and social change," said Sarah Newhall, head of Pact, a Washington-based international non-governmental organization operating in 14 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. "They think people are doing it just because they have a big ego or to serve their own interests or to make money, and they don't see that the people are working for the common good. This happens in many, many countries such as Tanzania."

Newhall spoke at a workshop on good governance for representatives from 40 NGOs affiliated with Pact in Tanzania. NGOs started up in Tanzania after 1992 when the East African nation, one of the poorest in the world, changed from a socialist system to a free market economy. Tanzania does not have a code of ethics for NGOs, and there have been several cases reported of individuals who set up NGOs to receive funds from international donors that ended up in their own pockets.

"It would be important to the non-governmental organizations leaders to sit together and create a code of ethics so that the NGO sector can regulate itself; if they run into a bad man or woman working for his or her self interest, they can urge them to move on," Newhall said. In neighboring Kenya where hundreds of local NGOs were created over the past decade, there has been mounting criticism that many are no more than conduits for individuals to obtain duty-free vehicles and computers.

Pact Tanzania director Dan Craun-Selka said rural communities sometimes do not recognize the value of work of NGOs because "it is the service they benefit from, and they 't really know where the service is coming from."

Pact supports advocacy NGOS that operate programs for youth and women dealing with HIV/AIDS and civic education. The workshop was sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development.