File photo for representational purposes only
Kampala: Uganda has seen a recent "sharp drop" in the number of registered non-governmental organisations the government said Monday, as NGOs and lawyers blamed toughening regulations that have notably hit foreign-funded agencies.
Stephen Okello, the executive director of the National Bureau for NGOs -- which manages the country's non-governmental organisations -- admitted that there had been "a sharp drop" with numbers more than halving over the past four years.
"We are currently studying the declining trend of NGOs registering for operators licences from 14,000 in 2019 to 5,021 as of August 2023," he said, the bureau was still receiving applications from locally-funded organisations.
He said many foreign-funded NGO donors had been withdrawing funding after the Covid-19 pandemic and added the drop could be explained by government measures to regulate the sector, without going into detail.
In 2021 the NGO bureau suspended 54 NGOs -- from women's groups to rights organisations -- for not complying with regulations.
"NGOs work is getting complicated," Chris Nkwatsibwe, a member of the NGO forum, told AFP.
He said that foreign agencies which previously supported their work were facing financial constraints, with NGOs enduring increasingly "stringent" regulations over funding.
"The restrictive regulatory regimes by the government imposed on NGOs on sourcing for foreign and local financial support are not helping the NGOs," he said.
"We are watching our backs and the number of NGOs operating in Uganda will continue going down as long the current NGO legal regime remains in place," human rights lawyer Eron Kiiza, who works with many Ugandan NGOs, told AFP.
"Some of us under the NGOs are under a threat by state agencies", he said, adding that "fewer NGOs are willing to go into our space because it is risky, and the state which regulates us has an upper hand."
