Dr Berhe Costantinos

On a positive note, millions of displaced persons have been able to experience a voluntary, safe and dignified return home. However, with an estimated 22 million people remaining forcibly displaced across the continent, significant challenges still remain. Due to the protracted nature of many African conflicts, a substantial proportion of those affected have been in displacement for years and in some cases decades. Whilst the need for assistance remains paramount, donor fatigue is placing vulnerable populations at risk of dwindling support. The protection and assistance that people receive is already very basic, a drop in this would be catastrophic.

Neither international aid nor international interventions on their own have significantly reduced vulnerability or brought enduring solutions. An enhanced involvement of well-resourced and well-equipped African actors could improve both the effectiveness of interventions and the sustainability of subsequent recovery programmes. It will, however, require a shift of both mindset and approach to humanitarian aid delivery.

	Berhe Costantinos, president of the Centre for the Human Environment, shares his views on encouraging signs of progress and change in Ethiopia

Today, African organisations suffer from insufficient funding to upgrade competences and structures to a competitive level, missing out on reliable longer-term institutional development as funding allocated to them is mostly tied to short-term, earmarked service-delivery programmes. They are particularly lagging behind in information technology which has transformed humanitarian relief beyond recognition in the last decade. Faced with this situation, Africans have developed their own perception of development which can help solve the problems facing the continent.

Humanitarian civil society organisations (CSOs) face many limitations in the sphere of institutional development. Various recommendations and declarations aimed at addressing the institutional problems of civil organisations have been made in recent years. Mobilising the action required has, however, remained a daunting challenge, as many practical and structural constraints militate against commitment by individual groups to inter-organisational initiatives, either nationally or regionally.

Although they have a lot to contribute as a first line of protecting human security and in their advocacy roles, African CSOs have been unable to establish a clear and coherent voice nationally on issues which are crucial to their work, or to the interest of the local communities they serve. While many people's and community based organisations proposals for remedial action have been formulated, real commitment to collaborative processes at the inter-organisational level has always been limited. Closely linked with this is the tendency of voluntary sector groups in the region to place a high priority on their external links, which undermines their legitimate mission as co-actors in the struggle of communities for self-empowerment.

The absence of effective networks which speak for them, coordinate their relations, represent their interests and advocate their position on important national issues, has hindered CSOs ability to make collective demands on some important issues. Another problem which characterises indigenous people's organisations is the lack of programmatic focus and the tendency to move from one sectoral project to another depending on available funding.

The inability to specialise in a particular area of competence renders organisational learning irrelevant and makes continuity of a particular agenda and goals impossible. A lot of CSOs invariably lack institutional memories and, hence, the reflective capacity and absence of professionalism in their work and the ability to take stock of where they are going, what they have learned and what lessons can be passed on to others. Beyond platitudes and good intentions, many civil institutions cannot participate in dialogue with donors and governments because they lack the personnel with requisite skills and facilities to inform their arguments or present credible data to support their assertions.

Far more critical in determining both the level and quality of dialogue between governments and civil society is the political and economic context in which African states find themselves. The context for dialogue, cooperation and interface between African governments and people's and community based organisations has so far been determined to a large extent by the pressures of the international community.

The widespread incidence of social conflict and political instability in Africa is directly attributable to basic weaknesses of institutions. While African states have greatly expanded since independence, this growth has not usually been accompanied by a concomitant improvement in the capacity and effectiveness of the state to extend legitimate authority and to deliver public services. With few exceptions, African state institutions have failed to win popular legitimacy.

Civil society institutions also remain generally underdeveloped; possessing relatively few authentic, large-scale organisations that can articulate and aggregate social interests. On the other hand, capacity development can be attained only if legal texts are applied to ensure full accountability, transparency and predictability of executive authority. Invariably, this means that they need to build the capacity for political culture development even before they go to the polls for elections that are harbingers of more violent protests.

Capacity development is a process of institutional learning, in which state and societal organisations develop a new and stable set of mechanisms. The generic characteristics of institutions that apply to state and CSOs in any country setting are organisational autonomy, capacity, complexity, and cohesion. In combination, these characteristics determine the relative strength or weakness of and state or non-state organisations.

*Dr Berhe Costantinos is president of the Centre for Human Environment, based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia