NANGO Zimbabwe

NANGO's roots stretch back further than almost any other civil society institution in Zimbabwe. It was founded in 1962 as a welfare organisation under the name Southern Rhodesia Council of Social Services, formed predominantly to coordinate social welfare organisations, and was formally registered in 1968 following the promulgation of the Welfare Organisations Act of 1967, a piece of legislation later transformed into the Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Act in 2001. After independence, as the number of NGOs operating in Zimbabwe grew rapidly, particularly in rural areas, the organisation was renamed Voluntary Organisations in Community Enterprise (VOICE), before being renamed again a decade later to its current name, the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations, reflecting its geographical expansion and steadily widening membership base.

As of June 2022, NANGO's membership stood at 1,246 NGO affiliates, and the organisation marked its Diamond Jubilee in 2025, sixty years of continuously coordinating and strengthening civil society's voice in Zimbabwe. NANGO's vision is a proactive community of NGOs, responsive and committed to the sustainable development needs of all people in Zimbabwe, and to the full realisation of human rights, democracy, good governance and poverty alleviation. Its mission is to strengthen, represent and coordinate the work of NGOs across Zimbabwe by creating space, promoting networking, dialogue and engagement that allows individual member organisations to more fully realise their own visions and missions.

NANGO's values, participation, diversity and inclusivity, transparency and accountability, non-discrimination, equity, equality, and engagement, run through every layer of how the organisation operates, both internally and in how it represents its members to government, donors and the private sector.

Zimbabwe's civil society sector is enormous and enormously varied, spanning health, education, human rights, youth development, disability advocacy, humanitarian response, land and environment, economic development, and arts and culture, among many other fields. Without coordination, a sector this large and diverse risks fragmentation: organisations duplicating effort, competing rather than collaborating for scarce donor funding, and speaking with dozens of disconnected voices rather than one that government, development partners and the private sector can genuinely engage with.

Zimbabwean civil society organisations also increasingly operate against a backdrop of declining donor support and an evolving, sometimes challenging, regulatory environment, conditions that make collective advocacy and shared institutional capacity more important than ever. Individual NGOs, particularly smaller, community-based ones, often lack the resources to navigate this landscape alone, to track regulatory changes, engage meaningfully in national policy processes, or defend civic space when it comes under pressure.

Coordinating and Strengthening Civil Society: NANGO's central role is coordinating the work of NGOs across Zimbabwe, building movement-level cohesion out of a sector that would otherwise be highly fragmented, and ensuring member organisations can learn from and support one another rather than working in isolation.

Membership Support Services: NANGO provides direct support services to its member organisations, strengthening their institutional capacity so that individual NGOs, particularly smaller or newer ones, can operate more effectively and sustainably.

Defending an Enabling Environment for Civil Society: Through its CSOs Enabling Environment programme, NANGO works to protect and expand the legal and regulatory space in which NGOs can operate freely, monitoring and responding to policy and legislative developments that affect the sector's ability to do its work.

Research, Policy Advocacy and Agenda Setting: NANGO conducts research and advocacy that shapes national development policy, positioning civil society as a genuine partner, rather than a bystander, in decisions about Zimbabwe's development direction and priorities.

Human Rights and Governance Programming: NANGO runs dedicated programming on human rights and governance, reflecting its founding commitment to democracy, good governance and the full realisation of human rights across Zimbabwean society.

Peacebuilding: NANGO's peacebuilding programme works to support social cohesion and conflict prevention, recognising that a healthy, functioning civil society is itself part of the infrastructure of a peaceful society.

Communication and Networking: NANGO actively facilitates networking and communication across its membership, running major convening events such as its Annual NGO Directors Summer Retreat and regional NGO Expos and Winter Schools, platforms designed to enhance the visibility of civil society, showcase its impact, and strengthen collaboration between NGOs, government, the private sector, media, academia and the general public.

NANGO's active initiatives include the Localisation in Action Initiative, which works to shift power and resources toward locally led development, a growing priority across the global humanitarian and development sector. The Action to Empower NGOs for Effective and Inclusive Governance and Development in Zimbabwe (ENERGIZE) programme strengthens the enabling environment for civil society, while a dedicated programme on Strengthening CSOs' Capacity to Defend and Safeguard Civic Space in Zimbabwe works directly to protect the operating space NGOs depend on. NANGO also runs ongoing programming tracking Zimbabwe's progress against the UN Sustainable Development Goals, asking directly whether the country is on track to achieve the 2030 Agenda.

NANGO works closely with CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance that monitors civic space conditions worldwide, and is listed on the CIVICUS Monitor. The organisation's partners and affiliated networks include Oxfam, the European Union, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Zimbabwe, UNICEF, and The Global Goals platform supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. NANGO's Board draws representation from across its ten thematic sectors, including leaders from member organisations such as the Zimbabwe Climate Change Coalition, reflecting how deeply embedded NANGO's governance is within the very civil society sector it exists to coordinate and represent.

Every contribution channelled through Fonseca to NANGO helps sustain the coordinating infrastructure that Zimbabwe's entire civil society sector depends on, the platforms, capacity-building, advocacy and protected civic space that allow more than a thousand member organisations to do their work, reach their communities, and hold government and development actors accountable. Supporting NANGO does not fund a single programme in a single district, it strengthens the institution that has spent more than sixty years making sure Zimbabwean civil society, in all its diversity, has the coordination, capacity and collective voice it needs to keep serving the country's most vulnerable people.