CSOs continue to evolve—report
Institute of Public Opinion and Research (Ipor) 2021 Civil Society Sustainability Index has shown that civil society organisations (CSOs) in the country continue to stagnantly evolve in becoming sustainable.
The score is a reflection of 2020 overall CSOs’ sustainability where Malawi scored 5.1 up from 5.2 in 2019.
The scores have been based on two key events that shaped context for Malawian CSOs in 2020, which the researchers identified as the presidential election in June following the Supreme Court’s annulment of the 2019 election result and the Covid-19 pandemic.
The report, while stating that Covid-19 may have been a contributing factor to CSOs’ deteriorating financial viability as foreign donors redirected their funds to the government’s efforts to fight the pandemic, also cites absence of tax incentives for donors as a way of improving this.
It was compiled by Michael Chasukwa, Boniface Dulani and Hannah Swila, who have termed CSOs’ environment as a mixed bag after noticing that they moderately improved on advocacy while financial visibility continues to threaten their sustainability.
Reads the report: “The legal environment governing CSOs was moderately more favourable as the new government adopted a more constructive stance towards CSOs and operationalised the 2017 Access to Information Act. Advocacy improved moderately as the change in government opened space for CSOs to influence public policy.
“CSOs enjoyed a moderately more positive public image as the media turned to them for their opinions and the government projected a positive opinion of the sector.”
The 2020 CSO Sustainability Index for Malawi released on Thursday shows that organisational capacity, service provision and sectorial infrastructure remained unchanged from 2019 findings.
According to the Council for Non-Governmental Organisations in Malawi, 774 CSOs were registered in the country at the end of 2020, an increase of 17 percent over the 671 organisations registered at the end of 2019.
The report, which was compiled from aggregates on grading of the researchers and observation of the CSOs in the year, has also shown that the legal environment and public image moderately improved.
In a separate interview, Chasukwa, who is Ipor deputy director of research and operations, said the research is meant to assist CSOs in drafting steps to improve the sector.
He said: “CSOs need to find best ways of working with the community and that may include changing their strategies on how to conceptualise their programmes to local constituencies so that their interventions align with the needs of the people.”
On his part, Congoma executive director Ronald Mtonga described the report as fair while admitting that some of the key problems are beyond the CSOs.
“The advocacy that CSOs are usually engaged in are of political nature but finances are very powerful and we are focused to sacrifice for our country because most of the spending NGOs are international and they focus on services, but are quiet on political advocacy because they are afraid of being victimised,” he said.
