Today is World NGO Day. Observed annually on 27 February since 2014, it is a day dedicated to recognising, celebrating and honouring the contributions and profound impact of NGOs worldwide and the people behind them.
EPIC-Africa joins the African and global NGO community and other stakeholders in commemorating World NGO Day.
NGOs are critical to Africa's well-being and development. Their efforts in providing services to the most geographically and socially marginalised populations, promoting rights-based approaches, shaping and influencing policy processes, and implementing development interventions, demonstrate and confirm their position as critical development stakeholders. Their contributions complement those provided by states, the private sector and others, and reinforce the necessity of increased collaboration between these stakeholders to respond meaningfully to Africa's development challenges.
At the same time, insufficient data often renders African NGOs' contributions invisible. As a result, many Africans are unaware that many of the benefits they enjoy today directly result from NGO-led actions. Furthermore, NGOs often lack the financial and moral support they need from the public. Invisibility and fragmentation prevent NGOs from connecting with and learning from one another and leveraging the benefits of networking and collaboration. Many worthy NGOs remain off funders' radar, and insufficient funding leads to resource constraints compromising their organisational health and effectiveness.
This reality is less than ideal.
In response to this situation, EPIC-Africa is committed to fundamentally changing the narrative about African NGOs, including the challenges and opportunities they face.
EPIC-Africa's work supporting African NGOs resonates closely with the objectives of World NGO Day. Its ongoing NGO mapping and survey projects, and initiatives such as the African CSO Excellence Awards, generate critical data and insights that increase African NGOs' visibility, credibility, and knowledge by highlighting who they are, what they do and how, who funds them, and the impact they make.
Looking ahead, EPIC-Africa will launch a ground-breaking new intervention, the African CSO Platform, in June 2023. The platform's vision is to strengthen, transform and reposition the role of African NGOs in the broader development and philanthropy ecosystem.
With a database of thousands of African NGOs at its core, it will produce actionable insights on the sector and enable CSOs to find and connect with each other and funders. It will become the strategic, one-stop, online entry point to the African NGO sector.
Similar and complementary to the objectives of World NGO Day, the platform will be EPIC-Africa's unique contribution to celebrating the work of African NGOs on an ongoing basis.
Rose Maruru is the Executive Director, and David Barnard the Programme Director at EPIC-Africa.