The Aid Chain explores the role of funding conditions in shaping co-operation and resistance as aid moves from donors, to NGOs, to local communities. Significant proportions of aid flow through the non-governmental sector but questions are increasingly being asked about the role of NGOs and whether they can deliver on their ambitious claims. This study examines whether the existing aid processes widely used by donors and NGOs are effective in tackling poverty and exclusion. Findings from fieldwork in Uganda, South Africa and the UK are used to show how the fast changing aid sector has, in the context of a dynamic policy environment, encouraged the mainstreaming of a managerial approach that does not admit of any analysis of power relations or cultural diversity. This increasing definition of the roles of NGOs as essentially technical, limits the extent of the very development that the organizations were initially established to promote.

• Prelims (Praise for The Aid Chain, Contents, Preface by Tony Benn, Acknowledgements, Figure, tables and boxes, About the authors, Acronyms)
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The changing context for the work of development NGOs
• 3. The management of development
• 4. The major UK donors and the flow of aid through the NGO sector
• 5. The NGO context in Uganda and South Africa
• 6. Normative conditions: rational management of the aid chain
• 7. The ties that bind
• 8. Relationships: partnerships, power and participation
• 9. Chains of influence in South Africa
• 10. Listening to the past and building a new future
• Back matter (Appendix, References, Index)

Tina Wallace
Tina Wallace has worked in development, as an academic, practitioner and activist for over 35 years and has conducted reviews with the major NGOs including Oxfam, ActionAid, WaterAid, Amnesty International, as well as IIED and the UK’s Department for International Development.

Lisa Bornstein
Lisa Bornstein worked for many years at the University of Kwa Zulu Natal, where she was head of the SA research, and she is now teaching and researching at the University of McGill in Canada. She specialises in planning as well as development issues.

Jennifer Chapman
Jennifer Chapman is currently working freelance, after three years heading an action research programme for ActionAid on the evaluation of advocacy work by development NGOs. She has extensive research and practical experience with NGOs and is currently developing a manual on understanding and learning from advocacy and policy work.