Non-Governmental Organizations’ approaches to women’s empowerment amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: Towards decolonizing development praxis in northern Ghana

Abstract

This article examines local non-governmental organizations (LNGOs) approaches to women's empowerment amid crisis and the implications for decolonizing women's empowerment praxis. The article draws on lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic and decolonial critique of development praxis to analyse LNGOs approach to women's empowerment. The study relied on snowballing to select twenty-six LNGOs operating in northern Ghana for in-depth interviews. Our study found that LNGOs deploy local and international frameworks on women's rights and combine these with indigenous knowledge principles and economic empowerment. Yet there are tensions between negotiating culturally appropriate approaches and meeting the interests of philanthro-capitalist donor agencies. The LNGOs are dependent on Western donors for financial resources and have become more vulnerable due to Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath as funding for women's empowerment work continues to dwindle. LNGOs have modified their interventions to address specific needs of beneficiaries arising from the consequences of the crises. This study enriches understandings of the specific vulnerabilities of LNGOs in northern Ghana, resource-scarce and semi-arid settings across the global South. For women's empowerment to achieve meaningful results, especially during and after crisis, activism needs to be centred on indigenous knowledge. This is central to building the resilience of LNGOs and women beneficiaries to effectively position themselves to absorb the shocks that attend crisis and to cope more effectively with it.