Regional Reports - the European External Action Service

• The scope of activities that an NGO undertakes also reflects its capacity, maturity level
and also experience in the management of project implementation. Thus, mature NGOs
are those which have long years of experience and which have been implementing
programs and project activities of wider coverage both in terms of geographic area and
the beneficiary population they reach. Hope for the Horn (HFH) and Ogaden Welfare and
Development Organization (OWDO) are among the examples of indigenous NGOs with
rich experience and wider coverage.
• Since the local NGOs which are established recently do not have access to funding
sources, their programs and projects are usually of short term duration. The lack of
permanent funding sources has therefore forced them to serve as ‘gap fillers’. Such
activities which characterises these NGOs are usually activities of short durations like
crisis management and emergency responses through relief food distribution and water
supply which are common activities during crisis.
• NSA in Somali region is different from many of the other regions in that the chamber of
commerce is less active despite the presence of a representative office. Thus, traders in
the main towns are not properly linked to the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce network
and this uniqueness could be probably attributed to the prevalence of ‘smuggling’ which
used to characterise the nature of trading activities in this region until very recently.
Similarly, labour union and/or workers associations are not actively operational at the
moment except the teachers association.
• Though NGOs operating in the region are thinly scattered over a vast geographic area,
they should have to engage in diverse thematic areas and meantime face numerous
challenges in order to address the multi-faceted social and economic problems of the
pastoral population. While the traditional beliefs and taboos are major challenges by
themselves, the recurrences of natural disaster resulting from drought and rain shortages
and also manmade factors such as war and internal conflicts also impose major restriction
on the operation of NSA. Therefore, the challenge for NSA operation is numerous and
more complex as the arena of engagement is infinite.
• It is difficult to access all zones and woredas of the region since there is no well
developed road network. Most of the roads are dry weather roads which are inaccessible
during rainy season and because of this, private transport services are not available during
rainy season while long distance travel to regional towns like Gode is usually by plane.
Thus, lack of transport and hence the difficulty involved and also the time spent
travelling between zones and woredas is an important challenge for NGO operation.
• Even though the primary objective of decentralisation is to make services more
responsive to community needs and also to facilitate participatory planning at woreda
level, the process of decentralisation has not yet translated into improved services due to
human resource constraints and a lack of technical capacity at woreda level government
offices. An evidence for the weak capacity of government offices at woreda level is the
sub-contract arrangement between NGOs and sector offices for the implementation of
projects in areas where government offices are less effective.
• Moreover, the accountability of government officials and civil society participation in the
governance process is limited. Thus, community voices are rarely heard since civil
society organizations lack the experience to engage in collective action which enable
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