From grassroots to government: FARM-Africa’s experiences influencing policy in sub-Saharan Africa

Increasingly, NGOs are becoming active in policy debates, yet a key question emerging from this new focus is whether NGOs can effectively influence the policy agenda. This publication presents four FARM-Africa projects from Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa, describing how they approached influencing national policy in the context of the natural resources sector.

The Overseas Development Institute’s ‘Research and Policy in Development’ (RAPID) framework is used to analyse the experiences of the four case studies and concentrates on one fundamental issue: Why are some ideas that have been generated by research taken up and used by policy makers, while others are ignored and disappear?

In answer to this question, the authors find that certain lessons can be identified:

• policy engagement is a complex, long-term process and sufficient investment is needed for any chance of success
• policy influencing requires a different set of skills to those NGOs traditionally rely upon. The FARM-Africa case studies showed quite clearly that all of the programmes had suffered due to a lack of appropriate human resources
• small to medium-sized NGOs may not have the human and financial resources that are required to make a persuasive case for change
• one solution may be for NGOs to forge partnerships with other groups that can complement their work
• whilst being involved in policy matters is extremely appealing, where organisations fail to plan properly and allocate sufficient resources it can become an expensive distraction. NGOs need to acknowledge their weaknesses and identify ways of overcoming them to make sure that the resources they allocate to this area make a significant difference to the lives of poor people

The authors conclude that FARM-Africa is currently addressing these issues, having recently realigned its strategy to include policy engagement as one of its priority activities. It has acknowledged that up to now most of its projects have lacked this element and as such, its new projects are designed to provide specific evidence in order to influence policy and are allocated resources for this purpose. It is acknowledged that there remain the challenges of developing the more sophisticated set of skills which will be needed and of transforming the organisation’s culture so that projects are seen as a means to an end rather than an end in themselves.