NGOs and poverty reduction in a globalizing world: perspectives from Ghana

This paper is concerned with the factors that influence and constrain NGO contributions to poverty reduction in a globalizing world, focusing on their role as transmitters of grounded knowledge about poverty in very poor countries. Interviews with staff in 33 NGOs in Ghana, a country where the NGO sector is heavily dependent on overseas funding, indicate that local understandings about poverty are being overridden by so-called programmes of partnership support that erode local confidence in home-grown ideas about poverty and how to combat it. This is illustrated by reference to the common donor preference for working with groups and for ‘Asian’ development approaches.