cluding a new constitution.Although the World Bank is different from other donors, primarily providing loans to member governments, its lead position in the donor community provides it with a powerful role supporting civil society. Ghana is the World Bank’s largest program in Africa. Between 1993 and 1995, the bank provided one third of the country’s total aid. In Uganda over the same period, World Bank lending accounted for nearly one quarter of the country’s overall aid. Although the World Bank’s lending program is very small in South Africa, it has played a very influential role at the level of policy in South Africa, and has an active program aimed at winning over elite opinion on economic liberalism. Uganda, Ghana and South Africa are among the more than fifty of the World Bank’s eighty local offices that now have staff responsible for civil society; this compares with only one office in 1995.The countries of the Like-Minded Group of donors support civil society but the support is irregular. In addition, within the group there are substantial differences in levels of support. Denmark is the leading donor to civil society in Ghana and Uganda in terms of amount aid as well as of number and range of CSO’s supported. Canada, on the other hand, despite a long history of partnership with NGO’s and people-to-people contacts, is not a significant donor to civil society in any of the three of the countries at least. Canadian aid has been involved in the production of eight green and white papers for legislation. The first objective of the creation of civil society is building democracy. The characteristics of this kind of democracy include “open political competition, with multi-parties, civil and political rights guaranteed by law, and accountability operating through an electoral relationship between citizens and their representatives”. Civil society’s role in building this form ...
