"This book helps to explain the widespread enthusiasm for African NGOs during the 1990s, and why it has waned in recent years. It does so through a fine-grained analysis of NGO and community dynamics, presented in the context of a broader theoretical discussion of the global transformations that contributed to the explosion of NGOs. This empirically rich multi-scaled analysis makes this book unique - not only as a volume of NGO case studies, but also as an experiment of applied social science in the context of globalization."--BOOK JACKET.