Muslim non-governmental organisations form a vital segment of Ghanaian civil society. Although less noted in public in comparison to Christian or secular ones, the virtual explosion of their numbers during the last decades has positively affected the self-empowerment of Muslim communities in Ghana. If local Muslim NGO s were exceptional and numbered but a handful during the latter part of the twentieth century, their numbers have swelled manifold during the first decades of the twenty-first century. This process reflects the ‘NGO-isation’ of Muslim activism witnessed throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
Three generations of Muslim NGO s operate currently in Ghana. The first generation stems back to the 1980s and refers (mainly) to organisations established as intermediaries for foreign donors. The first generation stems back to the 1980s and refers (mainly) to organisations established as intermediaries for foreign donors. The second generation of Muslim NGO s refers to independent NGO s collaborating with foreign Muslim charities. The oldest of these organisations were founded during the 1990s, others during the 2000s. Both the first and the second generation of Muslim organisations (generally) combine da’wa with humanitarian relief and social welfare projects directed to improve the (usually local) Muslim community.
In contrast to the first and second generations, the third generation of Muslim NGO s comprises of a variety of grassroots and youth organisations. Founded during the 2010s, all of them are distinct NGO s of the ‘internet era’ and ‘Facebook generation’. Most importantly, their existence is a vivid indication of the emergence of Muslim middle-classes in Ghana. A distinct marker of theirs is their independent position viz-a-viz foreign donors. They conduct mobilisation, visibility, networking, fundraising campaigns/crowdfunding and outreach through social media, most importantly Facebook, but to an increasing extent Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube. For them, self-empowerment is a multi-dimensional social process. At best, it strengthens their capacities to act, to transform social (including gender), economic, and political structures as well as to organise themselves to reduce poverty, social injustice and environmental degradation.
My investigation started by asking if zakat can serve as an instrument for empowering the Muslim communities in Ghana. All scholars I interviewed were affirmative to this but, in the same vein, addressed the state’s obligations to cater to the social welfare of its citizens. At the bottom line are the poor and vulnerable—is it the state or the local community to provide necessities? Although a state-funded social welfare system has been the rationale in Nordic and some Western European states, the idea of the ‘strong state’ has come under attack from neoliberalism since the late 1970s and resulted in the push for a ‘weak state’, especially in the Global South but increasingly also in the Global North. Congruent with introducing the ‘weak’ or ‘small’ state was the rise of ‘civil society’ during the 1990s, a development also witnessed in Ghana. Civil society and non-governmental associations and organisations replaced the ‘strong state’ as the provider of social welfare, usually organised on a community and local level, and often in close cooperation and financial assistance from national and international non-governmental organisations. The state, in turn, remained the provider of basic infrastructure.
In most cases, including Ghana, this is restricted to municipal planning and road, drainage and sewage system building. Sometimes water and electricity are included, housing usually not. The government provides education and health care, including schools and hospitals, at least on a rudimentary level. However, in many cases, private actors and organisations play a crucial role in Ghana. In recent years, the Ghanaian state even started to earmark funds for the development of Zongo communities, the Zongo Development Fund (est. 2017). The rationale of the initiative is a cooperation between state and civil society, particularly various Muslim stakeholders at local, regional, and national levels. Some Muslim academics and scholars hailed the initiative as a step in the right direction to address marginalised (Muslim) urban communities and called on Muslim NGO s to seek avenues of cooperation with government agencies. Others have raised concerns about the capacity of the Zongo Development Fund to contribute to empowerment at the micro-level or to address the special needs of those engaged in the informal sector, arguing that the introduction of Islamic financial instruments could best serve as antidotes to marginalisation.
Muslim NGO s form an integral part of the third sector in contemporary Ghana. Their upsurge during the 2010s is a direct consequence of the almost unlimited access to the internet and the global explosion of social media. They have become a tool for local Muslim activists and philanthropists, youth and women associations, clubs, groups and networks to gather funding for their social, socio-economic, cultural, educational and religious (da’wa) empowerment projects in their communities. While such projects per se are not novel ones within the Muslim sphere, the NGO as an instrument and a vehicle is an effect of various processes of globalisation and constitutes a new phase of Muslim activism. What is new are not transnational networks of Muslim scholars or local Muslim activism and community engagements but the possibility of any activist, group, or community connecting with any potential donor, supporter, sympathiser, or volunteer anywhere.
What is the role of zakat in a Muslim-minority lower-middle-class country like Ghana, where the government earmarks funding in the state budget for education and basic health care and infrastructural development? All the Muslim scholars I interviewed recognise that funds collected through zakat cannot replace government investments in social development. The rationale of zakat is not to fund a parallel Muslim social welfare system in Ghana but to supplement it. Arguably, this is the main argument of those pushing for the institutionalisation of zakat in Ghana. However, the counter-argument is valid, too—as there is no governmental system to take care of the poor and vulnerable, aged, disabled, orphans and widows, informal and horizontal zakat fulfils already an important task. Who will take care of them if zakat is institutionalised?
Nevertheless, informal and horizontal zakat will never tackle the root causes of poverty and cannot serve as a tool for empowering the vulnerable. Informal zakat keeps a needy person alive until the next day but will not result in a structural improvement of their life. The consensus among Muslim scholars and donors, I gather from my observations, is that zakat should and could be used to empower Muslim communities by especially earmarking investments in education and vocational training. The rationale of this argumentation focuses on the future instead of the present as education and training are identified as the key avenue for self-empowerment, self-employment, and (micro-) entrepreneurship. However, in my discussions with Muslim scholars and during my subsequent research on Facebook, it has become evident that non-mandatory faith-based forms of giving and private donations such as sadaqa (voluntary almsgiving/charity) and infaq (spending to please God but without asking for any favour or hoping for a return) have emerged as the cornerstones for funding Muslim self-empowerment.
Social media has changed the Muslim NGO landscape in Ghana. For an outside spectator or a historian trying to map their activities, social media has revolutionised their visibility. Whereas only a few of their activities previously had made the headlines in national newspapers and news reporting, any NGO active on social media has become its own channel for public communication. More than this, social media has revolutionised local activism as networking and campaigning have the potential to reach out to hundreds if not thousands of followers. An NGO can have members and volunteers in Ghana and branches outside the country, enabling it to solicit resources both internally and externally.
Moreover, social media provides new means for accountability and transparency. Many NGO s publish updates and notifications on the progress and the completion of a specific project; some post plans, certificates and statements on monthly collections on social media. This data is more than mere information; it is part of a dialogue and communication with members and donors, existing and potential future ones.
Ghanaian Muslim NGO s have opened new terrains of their activities during the last decade. Initially, their main domain of operation concentrated on four segments, namely the building of 1) mosques, 2) madrasas and educational facilities, 3) the drilling of wells and boreholes, and 4) humanitarian aid in the form of Ramadan and Eid feeding programmes. These four segments still constitute the core markers of any Muslim NGO, be it a da’wa organisation or a solidarity-based one.
However, a clear shift can be detected in some specific cases, most notably from planning to establish Islamic universities about a decade ago to the recent focus on advanced healthcare projects in the form of Muslim hospital projects. A few Muslim hospitals and Islamic clinics already exist in the country; the numerous new Muslim hospital projects are novel expressions of (Sunni) Muslim empowerment. All of the hospital projects have been initiated by local Muslim NGO s who extensively use social media to collect monthly donations from their members for their projects. Realistically, however, the sheer costs of building and eventually operating a hospital will need external donors committed to long-term investments.
Another new terrain of Muslim NGO s is orphans and persons with disabilities. Both groups have traditionally found relief and support from their extended family and Muslim scholars and imams. What is new during the ‘age of the internet’ is Muslim NGO s running monthly scholarship schemes for orphans and persons with disabilities. The visibility of Muslim orphanages, in turn, has increased manifold when Muslim NGO s have started their needs. Interesting and novel initiatives are the special schools for Muslim deaf and blind children.
Perhaps the most visible activity of Muslim NGO s has been their annual humanitarian aid campaigns and outreach programmes. Iftar meals, Eid al-Fitr celebrations and the slaughtering of cattle at Eid al-Adha for poor and needy members form an integral part of Islamic religious obligations and constitute an integral part of the Muslim sphere in Ghana (as well as elsewhere in the Muslim world). However, with the recognition of the two Muslim festivals by the Ghanaian state in the early 1990s, the fasting month of Ramadan and the two Eid festivals have become part of the public sphere. Although there exists no investigation on the activities connected to Ramadan and the Eid festivals in Ghana, this study hints that a change has occurred during the 2010s and correlates with the explosion of Muslim NGO s in Ghana during the decade. Future systematic research will validate or refute my hypothesis, although the qualitative data presented in the previous chapters seem to indicate that this change already started in the late 2010s and expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
Muslim NGO s are an urban phenomenon in Ghana. The majority of them are located in Accra, Kumasi and Tamale and direct their attention to urban and Zongo communities. A few of them run rural outreach programmes, either in the form of da’wa and madrasa projects or humanitarian aid programmes. None of them has so far developed a concept or programme addressing the special socio-economic and environmental needs of rural agricultural communities. This is a lacuna of all Muslim NGO s, be they local, national, or international. Apart from drilling wells and building mechanised boreholes in rural communities, any income-generating activities addressing their special needs have been absent. This is remarkable as more than half of the Muslim population live in rural communities and most of them in the savannah regions in the northern parts of the country. The future challenge of Muslim NGO s will be to include the rural communities in their ambition to empower the Muslim communities in Ghana and help Muslim rural communities to form their own NGO s and connect with national and international donors.
More ambitious is the idea of developing a zakat fund, be it a local, regional or national one, into a kind of a non-governmental community-based social welfare office. All of the existing zakat schemes in Ghana, at least in principle, indicate an objective to support local poor and needy persons. However, for this to materialise, further critical discussions and elaborations are needed and include all stakeholders and members of the community, the scholars, the donors and the recipients. A crucial point repeatedly raised in my discussions with Muslim scholars is the absolute need for accountability and transparency of the operations of any zakat fund. If a zakat scheme lacks trust among the community, it will never enhance the empowerment of its members and the Ghanaian Muslim community.
Muslim NGO s are moving mountains in their ambition to empower Muslim communities and fight against poverty and marginalisation. Their main challenge is their weak institutional foundation; few of them can rely on long-term income. They are most efficient and effective when carrying out ad hoc programmes and projects but are vulnerable themselves as they depend on external funding for their activities. They are ideal tools for generating short-term but weak ones for initiating and maintaining long-term structural changes. The Islamic solution for the latter problem is Islamic micro-finance and waqf, or the pious endowment. Interestingly, since the 2010s, a public debate about introducing Islamic social finance tools in Ghana, primarily in the form of Islamic banking to complement the conventional banking sector, gained momentum. Although no Islamic banks have so far been established in Ghana, Muslim philanthropists, groups and NGO s have introduced schemes for Islamic microfinance, Islamic investment and waqf as instruments for poverty alleviation and socio-economic improvement of local (Muslim) urban and rural communities. Future research will tell if these instruments will form the corner-stone of Muslim self-empowerment in Ghana.