An investigation of governance and management structures of NGOs in Botswana towards efficient use of their funding

Abstract

Over the past decades, the number of NPOs has rapidly increased in developing countries. According to Kharas (2007), regardless of the fact that the number of NPOs is inconlcusive, the number is said to be between 6000 and 30,000 operating in developing countries. Moreover, research by Anheier (2014) shows that in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, NPOs attributes to 6% of the employment rate. Similarly, in developed countries like America, the contribution of NPOs is quite significant. Statistics show that NPOs attribute to 5.5.% to the Gross Domestic product ($808 billion in output), employing 13.7 million people and a 10% total contribution to the labour market in 2010 (Independent Sector USA, 2020). Despite the importance of NPOs in developed countries and their contribution to socio economic development, developing countries are lagging in having sound governance and accountability structures that allow them to fully reach their mandate (Kang’ethe & Manomano, 2014). In Mongolia, for example lack of accountability structures amongst NPOs led to ineffective operations in the country (Hoelman, 2014). Similarly, In Mali, donors such as the Global Fund against HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis threatened to withdraw their support, citing lack of governance, accountability and misappropriation of funds (Global Fund , 2010).

Particularly, in Botswana, governance and accountability has also been cited as the main challenges for NPOs despite the phenomenal increase in registry over the past decade (Matenge, et al., 2017; Kebonang & Lebotse, 2010). According to Matenge et al. (2017), research shows that lack of corporate governance reporting is one of the major contributing factors that leads to eroded donor trust in injecting resources in NPOs especially because NPOs in Botswan still rely on external funding, either from government or international donors. Consequently, the praiseworthy high registry rate of NPOs as suggested by Kebonang & Lebotse (2010) is nullified by high failure rates due to lack of governance, accountability and sound financial management structures.

Depsite growing literature in NPOs world wide, research in governance and financial management structures in Botswana seems to be quite limited, depsite the country aiming for middle upper class status in 2030 as part of its vision pillars (Botswana Government, 2016). This provides an immediate research gap in literature for the researcher to explore. Furthemore, the notable failure rate of NPOs in Botswana, mandates the researcher to explore this occurence, despite Botswana enjoying high sustainble economic growth rates. Therefore, the research problem for the study is expressed as:

“Despite the unique role NPOs offer in civic society in terms of social development in Botswana, high registry over the past decade has been met with low success rates in fulfilling their mandate due to lack of accountability and poor governance structures”.