Since the 90’s, the Western governments have increased their interest in funding civil society in Africa to promote democratization. This discussion paper examines how arange of foreign donors, including Western Governments, multilateral agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) have developed “civil society” in Ghana, South Africa and Uganda. Other important assistance comes from Civil Society Organizations (CSO’s) to assist in basic provisions for food health and shelters.The three countries discussed in this essay are viewed as models by the Western World since they are amongst the African nations that receive the most foreign aid. For example, in 1995 South Africa was the second largest African recipient of US aid after Egypt; Ghana was the seventh-largest recipient of US aid; and Uganda was the ninth-largest recipient in 1997. Uganda is Denmark’s top aid recipient worldwide and was the UK’s second-largest African aid recipient and Ghana was its fifth-largest African aid recipient in 1997.The single most favored area of US civil society assistance is that of advocacy NGO’s, such as human rights groups and election monitoring organizations that seek to influence governmental policy on some specific set of issues. National organizations that receive the most support from donors include the following kinds of groups: women’s organizations, rights/legal aid groups, think tanks, development NGO forums, business associations, governance/democracy NGO’s, youth and student organizations, conflict resolution groups and professional media associations. They are mostly those concerned with supporting political liberalization, those concerned with promoting economic liberalization and those supporting the rights and political participation of particular socially excluded groups, such as rural women or the urban poor. Donors are not funding the popular sectors of society, b...
