North-South Partnerships
In the development industry, "partnership" has become the established norm for a broad range of relationships between donors and Northern NGOs on the one hand and local organisations on the other. While Transform Africa sees partnership between northern and southern organisations is a critical ingredient in fighting poverty in Africa, we believe that a common reason for development initiatives to be less than successful has been traced to low quality of relationships between the two actors. This low quality largely reflected in disempowerment of the weaker party, lack of mutuality in consequences of success or failure, inadequate ownership of change processes and sustainability of outcomes, and many more systemic problems.
In its struggle to improve the quality of development partnerships in Africa, Transform Africa and its local partners are engaged in action research, lobbying, training, mentoring and other processes that aim to influence donors and NNGOs to re-define their relationships and enhance self-determination among local organisation in Africa. One odf such processes resulted in The Harare Declaration and the "Partnership Transformation Research", which can be accessed on our Research Page.
