Appeal: Africa needs 'civil society' as defence against tyranny

Oxfam backs Uganda pressure groups in campaign to win rights for women and poor

Here is an interesting "between seasonal festivities" exercise. Make a list of all the groups and organisations you have links to. It will be far bigger than you might imagine.

Start with the family and work from there: the school, parent-teacher association or board of governors. Or begin at work and include professional associations or trade unions. Add politics: a mainstream party, a pressure group – such as Amnesty International or Friends of the Earth.

Then there are churches, youth and sports clubs, arts groups, local charities and more. Edmund Burkecalled them the "little platoons" of society – the organisations that interpose themselves between the individual and the state. Modern sociologists call them the institutions of "civil society" and say they provide the glue that holds society together. They also act as a natural brake on tyrannical behaviour by governments – there are too many organisations with vested interests who will protest about unfair changes.

When people in the West talk of "underdeveloped" countries, it is the basics they have in mind. Africans need clean water, more food and better health care. They also need a reliable income, the ability to borrow to invest, a sounder overall economy – things we know are more difficult to provide.

But what requires a greater leap of imagination is to see that for Africa to develop properly it must nurture "civil society" bodies to act as natural checks and balances on government.

All three charities in The Independent's "Hope for Africa" Christmas appeal insist that, for real development to take place, local people cannot rely on endless transfusions of Western aid. They have to be empowered to build skills and organisations to help themselves. But one of our charities, Oxfam, goes a step further.

Oxfam is funding a number of civil society bodies in Uganda, which is regarded to have made good progress in terms of democratic institutions and management of its economy and international debts.

"Digging a well is not enough to fight rural poverty," said Monica Naggaga, a Ugandan who runs Oxfam's Kampala office. "We have to find ways of changing policies, laws and traditions which hold back poor people." So Oxfam funds the Uganda Land Alliance, which is working for change to allow women to inherit land. "Under the clan system women have no rights. Land can be sold without their knowledge, even though they work it," Ms Naggaga said.

Oxfam also backs the Uganda Debt Network, which has been monitoring the government's Poverty Eradication Plan and which has forced changes in what Ms Naggaga calls "a very bureaucratic document which wasn't helping the poorest people". Perhaps the most significant of Oxfam's work is with the Southern and East African Trade Information and Negotiation Institute (Seatin), which trains Ugandan, Kenyan and Tanzanian government negotiators to take part in World Trade Organisation ministerial conferences. Jane Nalunga of Seatin said: "At Seattle in 1999 we were able to point up the implications of the proposed investment and competition policies."

Ms Naggaga said: "Nothing will really change in Africa until ordinary people develop the skills to keep a proper eye on government."