Signing documents

Accountability politics and racialized suspicion in Africa's development audits

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2290955
AutoresMiriam Hird‐younger (0000-0001-9483-2032, Department of Sociology and Anthropology Carleton University Ottawa Ontario Canada), Sarah O''Sullivan (0000-0003-4484-7951, Department of Anthropology Capilano University North Vancouver British Columbia Canada)
Año2024
Volumen47
Número1
Páginas10-22
Fecha de publicación2024-05-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPoLAR Political and Legal Anthropology Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1081-6976 • E-ISSN: 1555-2934
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/plar.12558
OpenAlexW4396674509
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas46

Good governance policies in international development require nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to translate their programs into documents that render NGOs knowable and accountable to their donors. Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana and Uganda, we examine the signatures on these documents and the labor of NGO staff to obtain the signatures of aid recipients. We argue that signatures serve as mechanisms that NGO staff use to make their good governance practices traceable and to deter donor suspicion of funding misuse. Staff dedicate significant energy to imagining how signatures may or may not trigger donor suspicion. We posit that despite NGO staff's anxiety over getting signatures right-present, matching, and signed by the correct person-signatures can only ever defer donor suspicion. Such suspicion cannot be eliminated because it is deeply entrenched in racialized logics that position Global North donors as holding expertise and African NGOs as susceptible to corruption. Because NGO staff worry about donor suspicion rather than what aid recipients communicate with their (lack of) signatures, even fake signatures can circulate just as well as authentic ones. Tracing the social dynamics of collecting signatures sheds light on the racialized injustices inherent in Africa's development systems

International Development and Aid · Religion, Society, and Development · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development