US and Benin NGOs Assess partnership

Abstract

"In a word, the Benin Indigenous NGO Strengthening (BINGOS) project is about professionalism," said Dan Gerber, Africare's country representative in Benin. A year ago, InterAction member Africare signed a $4.6 million three-year grant with USAID foster civil society by helping professionalize 20 to 30 recentrly created Beninese NGOs. The US and Beninese NGOs assessment of the first year of the effort illuminates some of the challenges, and the rewards, of North-South partnership. Six of the original 23 chosen NGOs have droped out or been suspended, Gerber reported. "Some NGOs have commented that the BINGOS program is the "structural re-adjustment program for local NGOs' and some have been less than pleased with Africare's 'conditionalities' of transparency, accountability and institutional checks and balances."