by Zdena Middernacht
Rapid shifts are reshaping the international development sector. The lingering effects of Trump-era policies are still unfolding, a notable recent example including Botswana, whose national health crisis is also contributed to by USAID’s cutting away a third of the country’s HIV response funding, which the latter was providing. At the same time, aid’s strong trade and political conditionalities, once unspoken truths, are now openly declared and unapologetically enforced. Across Europe, anti-migration rhetoric and the advance of far-right policies accelerate at a pace that outstrips meaningful analysis. NGOs and other actors in the development space find themselves in a constant state of asking, “What now?”, but in a world moving this quickly, even the most thoughtful answers risk irrelevance almost as soon as they are formed.
The reprioritisation of funding, which has led to shrinking resources across several sectors – development among them, but also science and research depending on the country, has become a defining feature of budgetary policies in a number of European countries and in the US at this moment. In the development sector, this shift has prompted organisations to reflect on how to build resilience in the face of growing uncertainty. It has also sparked new conversations among actors in the field, with some, such as philanthropists, re-examining their roles. From the vantage point of a development consultant, this is visible in the way donors and grantees are considering how best to navigate the shifting landscape, while also reconsidering their own positions within it.
Yet a more profound and pressing question for traditional ‘development organisations’ is whether, and why, they should continue to exist in their current form. And if such organisations find the courage to embrace change, what might that change look like? This line of inquiry sits within the broader and more radical horizon of imagining alternative, pluriversal systems. Still, within this expansive vision, organisations in the development sector, in this case, NGOs in particular, must begin by acknowledging their place within the current system. From there, they can ask themselves: how might we evolve, or even decompost, in ways that contribute meaningfully to the nourishment and emergence of new ways of being, relating, and organising?
Rethinking Structure: Power, Resistance, and the Messiness of Change
These questions are not just theoretical; they are already finding expression in practical processes such as organisational restructuring. Large, values-driven networks are beginning to reckon with the limits of traditional development structures, especially those that concentrate power in the global minority countries while treating global majority offices as implementers of externally designed development frameworks.
As the global majority becomes more assertive, issues of relevance, legitimacy, and practicality are forcing a necessary rethinking of these structures. But moving from reflection to action is rarely straightforward. Power resists being given up. Restructuring efforts often encounter pushback, sometimes disguised as questions about capacity – and these dynamics can quickly turn personal, even unpleasant.
It’s easy to get caught in these internal politics. But while managing those realities, NGOs and those who support organisational development processes (e.g. consultants) also need to hold space for the more difficult, system-level questions. One of those is: Where does the money come from? If restructuring processes are leading us into the direction of localisation, can we truly localise when development funding continues to flow from the global minority? And while we pursue localisation, how might we draw on local sources of philanthropy-those that already exist, though they are often overlooked?
Philanthropy in Context: Challenging the Standard NGO Model
This brings us to the need to reimagine not only structure but the very logic of development organisations. Scholars like Mwathi Mati (2016) remind us that philanthropy is not a universal concept with a single expression. The Euro-American model of philanthropy tends to prioritise vertical giving – from wealthy benefactors to recipients deemed “in need.” But in many African contexts, philanthropy takes a more horizontal form: people facing similar struggles support one another in ways that are reciprocal, relational, and deeply embedded in community.
This kind of giving often takes the shape of remittances, communal care, or informal mutual aid. In concrete terms, these forms of giving, certainly remittances, exceed amounts that are sent to global majority countries as overseas development aid. Collectively, these forms of generosity challenge dominant assumptions about who gives, and to whom. (See also Copeland-Carson, 2007; Mukwedeya, 2011). By design, this model lends itself as an alternative practice that challenges the asymmetrical donor-recipient relation within the aid apparatus.
If we take seriously the idea that philanthropy is culturally shaped, then we must also question the model of the standard NGO, particularly in African contexts. Most NGOs in the global majority are built on the Euro-American model of philanthropy, and therefore structurally dependent on vertical, donor-driven funding flows. But what if, instead, NGOs were designed around horizontal models of giving that already exist within their communities?
Such organisations may prove not only more relevant, but also more sustainable and more closely aligned with the values, practices, and economic realities of the contexts in which they operate. This could be the key to real localisation: not merely shifting structures, but engaging with the deeper logics that shape how people organise, relate, and care for one another. Only by doing so can we move beyond the “band-aid” approaches that reinforce the very hierarchical, racist, and colonial systems the global aid architecture continues to reproduce.
Learning from Organic Models
This isn’t an entirely new idea. There are already organisations that embody these alternative models – structures that have grown from the ground up, rooted in local values. These organisations are sustained by the communities they serve, cultivating an equal relationship in which the organisation sustains and is sustained by the same community. An obvious one that comes to mind is Zlto in South Africa – a compelling example of what’s possible when we design from within the community, rather than imposing from above. Zlto runs a platform that tackles youth unemployment in South Africa by rewarding young people with tokens for volunteering and upskilling. These tokens can be exchanged for essentials like food, electricity, and airtime, with activities tracked in real time. By linking youth, local vendors, and international partners, Zlto lowers living costs while creating pathways to work.
Their existence reminds us that alternative models are not hypothetical – they’re already here. The task is to notice them, learn from them, and allow them to challenge our assumptions about what civil society organisations should look like.
Restructuring or Decomposing?
Yes, it is possible for traditional NGOs to restructure in ways that redistribute power, deepen inclusion, and open up shared decision-making. But such efforts must also reckon with the limits of what restructuring alone can achieve. If the foundational logic of the organisation remains unchanged and does not challenge the global structures that maintain inequality and injustice, any restructuring can only go as far as limited by the logics of the “development apparatus”.
In cases where it is clear that the final goal of restructuring leans towards localisation, organisations must be willing to ask hard questions in order to engage meaningfully with localisation. In some cases, the answer may not be restructuring at all, but decomposition: breaking down in order to make space for something new, something more relevant, more responsive, and more rooted. At first glance, this may seem radical. But when we look around, we see that the seeds of alternative futures are already sprouting, in community-based organisations, in mutual aid networks, in models that resist the linear logic of top-down aid. As consultants supporting organisational development in the sector, our job now is to take these alternatives seriously, and to recognise them not as exceptions, but as signs of what’s possible.
Zdena Middernacht is a Director and Senior consultant at Organisation Development Support (ODS). Her work integrates insights from NGO practice, academia, and consultancy. She is also a member of the Playground Collective, founded within ODS, and dedicated to the exploration of alternative practices. She holds a BA and Honours degree in Psychology and Organisational Psychology, and a Master’s and PhD in International Relations.