Let's talk research! CSO Partnerships in Uganda

At this point (I’m writing this late on Thursday evening the 25th, god knows when I get a chance to upload this… hopefully on Friday! - nope, it's Monday today...) I have been here for nearly 5 weeks, which means I’m halfway my fieldwork research period. Halfway! On the one hand that is hard to believe, because it feels like we have been here forever already, which I guess is a good sign. We go ‘home’ to the guesthouse, work in the office is fun and most weekends are stuffed with activities to see, do or explore. This means time also flies, and it is hard to believe that we’re already halfway and the end comes nearer. So far I have posted mainly about fun stuff, weekends away, remarkable activities and some general things. But because I don’t want to limit myself to only posting weekend things (and because other than reading Max Havelaar – a Dutch literary classic, give it a try! – I don’t really have a plan for the evening), maybe it’s interesting to talk a little bit more about my raison d’être here in Kampala.

I realized I only briefly talked about my research (for the less diehard fan-base: check post 3) and given that the reason I am here is to do research, that’s a little weird. So forgive me for this possibly somewhat boring story (especially compared to the last one), but it’s what I do here so I guess you just gotta live with it!

As often the case in academics, my research is about something that has been done a million times already, though never precisely like I do it, hence it’s unique and groundbreaking (as I like to believe…). From around the 1990’s onward people have studied partnerships between NGOs and literally thousands of papers, reports, policy recommendations, guidelines and whatnots have been written and published on the topic since. So naturally, sometimes I wonder why on earth I’m doing this, because it’s very likely it’s probably been done before. But after many hours on Google and talking to people, apparently I did indeed manage to find a gap in the academic market and thus, hurray!, established my uniqueness.

#StudentLife: fries with Ugandan 'ketchup', a coke and some partnership readings

What I look at are partnerships between NGOs (or, more broadly, CSOs, civil society organizations), and in particular the influence of who is in the partnership on how the partnership functions and is perceived. By selecting a few partnerships between an Irish NGO and a Ugandan NGO, and comparing it to a partnership between only Ugandan NGOs, I hope to figure out if having an international NGO in the partnership (i.e. a different partnership composition) changes how the partnership is viewed and functions. I will try figure this out through qualitative interviews and a short quantitative questionnaire. To add some extra data/opinions I also interview other experts or high profile people from the Ugandan civil society and discuss partnerships with them.

After four weeks of planning, redesigning and preparing I have finally started my interviews and things are beginning to get going. The nature of my research means I have to talk to various different organizations, that I have to carefully pick who to talk to and that it will be relatively small scaled but rather in-depth. Already now, after one completed interview and a few meetings with others, I realize that (of course) reality does not work the way I planned it to work in my proposals and my plans. Real relationships (including partnerships) and situations are more complicated, messier and don’t follow ideal proposals. What the conclusions will be I don’t dare to predict yet, neither can I say for sure that they will be useful or really ‘new’, but I do know that the whole thing is a good exercise in learning how to do research from the first to the final step, as well as a good way of gaining ‘real life experience’.

Picture of a performance at the National CSO Fair, helt on the 25th-26th

Which means… sometimes things are freaking frustrating! I am trying to have an interview with one lady for example. She is important, because she works for one of my main case organizations. I’ve visited the office three times now and instead of having an interview after we scheduled a meeting during my first visit, I’ve ended up going there again and again thinking I’ll have an interview, but ending up rescheduling it. It wasn’t on Tuesday, it wasn’t today… it better actually be next Monday! You have to chase people, call them, visit them, meet them here or there, go to their office again and again and then, hopefully, you finally get the right person and you finally manage to schedule a meeting! As said, I had one interview so far. I walked there. However, only on Tuesday and today combined I probably spent probably around 6 or 7 hours in some form of transport cruising the city to (fail to) meet people! You can imagine what my total travel time will be at the end of this trip, when I hope to have done at least 9 or 10 interviews! I’ve got one interview scheduled for tomorrow morning (expected travel time, 1.5 hours to get there, maybe 1/1.5 hours to get back), two for Monday (in different parts of Kampala… don’t even want to know how long that’ll take!), two for Tuesday (in another district… count the day as lost) and maybe one on Wednesday…

View from the balcony at GOAL Uganda's office, where I went on Friday morning the 26th

But then, it’s nice to be busy and when cruising Kampala in taxis (see post 2 or whichever one was about traffic) from one corner to the other I feel all the more part of this city and country. It’s the best way of getting to know places and becoming part of the city’s daily life. Anyway, I’m drifting off topic. In sum, the research is going well, but I have no clue if it will keep going well. Nor do I particularly care to be really honest. I enjoy my time here, I enjoy doing the research, it’s a great (learning) experience and in my view, that’s all that matters. Yes, at some point in the not-so-far-away future I need to write a dissertation that links in with this stuff, but hey, it’s still far away enough to look to the other side and pretend it’s not there!