Abstract

The aftermath of neoliberal insurgency in Africa has been a minimal role of the state and a greater participation of non-state agencies in development agenda. Within the international development, civil society discourse is understood as a comprehensive representation of communities in the South. While the international development community has championed NGOs as powerful antidotes for challenges facing the South, they have also been accused of engaging target communities in global development rhetoric through oversimplifications of aspirations and potentials of the target communities. This article investigates the ambivalence of NGO-ization through analyzing the growth of the NGO sector in Kenya during the period between 2003 and 2012 and exploring the circumstances that resulted in the proliferation of NGOs. Imploring specific images that depict conditions in the global South has facilitated invocation of global norms through NGO-ization in the global South. Such images have served the purposes of enhancing binary asymmetric relations through a preference for interventions while hindering the potential of local solutions and innovations in the quest for development in the South.