funding

The Gauteng Department of Social Development underspent its welfare budget by R90 million during the past financial year, according to a report in the Beeld newspaper.

This, despite the fact that the welfare sector's shortage of money had been so critical that various NGOs had to scale back on services and retrench personnel.

A new agency, Small Enterprise Finance Agency, aimed at funding small businesses, has committed itself to doing things differently from traditional banks.

SEFA’s interim executive of wholesale funding, Loni Mamatela, states that the agency, whose mandate is largely funding, will also provide funding of R50 000 and R3 million to small businesses. .

SEFA was formed less than a month ago through the merger of Khula Enterprise, South African Microfinance Apex Fund and the Industrial Development Corporation's small business lending book.

KwaZulu-Natal MEC for social development, Weziwe Thusi, has committed herself to strengthening partnerships with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the province.

Thusi, who delivered her budget speech this week, announced that she will set aside 48 percent of her R2.1-billion budget to assist NGOs, stressed the importance of NGOs, which  as they constitute an extension of the work done by her department.

New Malawian President Joyce Banda has asked Britain and the United States to resume funding as she moves to heal breaches created by the late President, Bingu wa Mutharika.

Banda points out that, "I have started speaking to donor partners both inside and outside the country on the economic challenges the country is facing and I pressed them to resume relations with the country."

The National Lotteries Board (NLB) has paid out over R2 billion to beneficiaries in the 2011/2012 financial year.

In a press statement, NLB chairperson, Alfred Nevhutanda, points out that while the NLB is proud of this achievement, further measures are being put in place to speed up the processing of progress reports.

Nevhutanda states that one of the reasons for the slow process is that staff had to process reports and prepare packs for meetings where funding applications were adjudicated.

The NGOs says a US$1.7 billion funding shortfall to fight tuberculosis (TB) over the next five years means 3.4 million patients will go untreated and gains made against the disease will be reversed.

In a joint statement, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, the Stop AIDS Campaign and anti-poverty group Results UK, say over the next two years, the Stop TB Partnership estimates that globally 244 000 people will go untreated for TB, 40 percent of them living in Mozambique and Tanzania.

The Botswana Government says that some external funding of NGOs comes with agendas.

Speaking during the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Pitso held in Gaborone, spokesperson, Dr. Jeff Ramsay, pointed out that, while NGOs may play an important role in the development of the country, some of their funders want to push their own agendas.

“When NGOs come up with nice programmes, the media should find out who is funding them and why are they being funded,” he explains.

The Limpopo government’s failure to pay rent to a non-governmental organisation has forced the closure of a clinic in the Sekhukhune region.

Jane Furse Memorial Village NGO spokesperson, Tebogo Phasha, points out that though they have local residents’ interests at heart, they will not allow the clinic at the old Jane Furse hospital buildings to operate unless health authorities pay R17 500 a month for rent.

The Department of Health says that the delay in funding, which has resulted in lay-offs at NGOs fighting HIV/AIDS, are out of its control.

The department spokesperson, Fidel Hadebe, says that they are taking the matter very seriously but much of the blame lies with the Global Fund secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland.

Hadebe maintains that until the Global Fund has been able to deal with process issues on its part, the department will not be able to disperse any funds.