Only 788 out of 9,251 civil society organisations (CSOs) in Ghana renewed their operating permits in 2019, the latest Ghana CSOs Sustainability Index Report has revealed.
The Department of Social Development (DSD) registers private, non-profit service providers, advocacy groups, social service agencies, professional associations, community-based organisations and religious groups among others in the country.
Findings suggest over 8,000 CSOs across the West African country had either collapsed, dormant or operating without permit.
The report showed that donor support to CSOs in Ghana had dwindled over the period as the organisations heavily relied on foreign donor support to sustain their operations.
A development consultant at the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG) and author of the Ghana CSOSI report, Douglas Quartey, attributed the situation to a strict registration process.
Quartey, who presented the findings of the report at a press conference in Accra, said the bureaucratic procedures involved in securing permits made it difficult for some of them to register.
‘In the past, it was very easy to register, but now because of the checks that have been put in place, it is becoming a challenge’, Quartey said.
‘After registering the organisation, you have to go to the DSD for permit and that comes at an extra cost which is a hindrance to some of the smaller organisations’.
Quartey said unlike South Africa, where corporations provided nearly a third of all funding to CSOs in 2019, corporate support to CSOs in Ghana ‘is modest and narrowly targeted’.
He also said most foreign donor agencies had reduced their funding to CSOs due to changes in their priorities and programmes.
“For example, the Danish International Development Agency reduced its aid from approximately $19.7 million in 2018 to $3.7 million in 2019, as it has shifted its priority to trade, thus ending its funding to STAR-Ghana as well’, he said.
For his part, a Senior Research Fellow at IDEG, Kwesi Jonah, expressed concern over the continuous decline in donor support to CSOs.
Jonah called on the government to establish an independent funding agency to support the activities of CSOs as he described as dangerous the heavy reliance on foreign donors to sustain the operations of CSOs.
Source: Graphic Online
Photo source: WACSI
