Digital Postcolonialism and NGO Accountability During COVID-19 - Evidence From The Gaza Strip

The British Accounting Review xxx (xxxx) xxx
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Digital postcolonialism and NGO accountability during COVID-19:

Evidence from the Gaza Strip
Mohammed Alshurafa a, *, Mohammed Aboramadan b, Roszaini Haniffa a
a
Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS, Scotland, UK
b
School of Economics, Adminstration and Public Policy, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Al Tarfa Street, Doha, Qatar
A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Drawing from a digital postcolonialism perspective, this paper explores how the leftover tech
Accountability nology available in the colonised space shapes the landscape of NGOs’ accountability to bene
COVID-19 ficiaries and funders during the COVID-19 lockdown. The context of the study is the Gaza Strip, a
Digital postcolonialism
socially and politically vulnerable geographic location with heavy reliance on support from
Gaza strip
Non-governmental organisations
NGOs. We conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with Palestinian and international NGOs
during and after the lockdown to enhance our understanding of the challenges and opportunities
they faced in adopting technology to discharge accountability during a major disruptive event.
Three main themes emerged from our analysis. First, the biggest challenge is downward
accountability to the most deprived and marginalised beneficiaries due to implications of the
digital occupation which caused digital unaffordability and illiteracy, voluntary digital resistance
to counter suspicion of surveillance, and female digital disempowerment. Second, upward
accountability was less problematic as funders accepted ad hoc technology-based accountability
practices, but some concerns remained over the efficacy and sustainability of digital adoption in
the long run. Finally, the pandemic granted NGOs new opportunities in utilising technology,
which successfully changed their process and practice of accountability.
1. Introduction
The issue of accountability of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has received a lot of attention in the accounting literature
due to their vital role in delivering humanitarian aid and helping facilitate achievements in human development. More recently, the
focus has shifted to accountability related to natural crises (see e.g., Perkiss & Moerman, 2020; Sargiacomo & Walker, 2021; Taylor,
Tharapos, Khan, & Sidaway, 2014) and, in particular, the COVID-19 pandemic (Yu, 2020, 2021). Since NGOs receive funding from
various funders to support their activities with various groups of beneficiaries, including the most vulnerable people in different parts
of the world, they face an increasing demand to discharge more accountability (Agyemang, O’Dwyer, Unerman, & Awumbila, 2017).
One of the accountability mechanisms that has attracted the attention of researchers is the use of technology to cope with the
increasing and complex accountability demands faced by NGOs (Agyemang, O’Dwyer, & Unerman, 2019).
There is no denying that the development of new technologies offers NGOs novel ways of meeting the increasing demands of
transparency, auditability, and openness resulting from the interactions between people, organisations, and systems (Jacobsen &
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: M.Alshurafa@hw.ac.uk (M. Alshurafa), Mohammed.aboramadan@dohainstitute.edu.qa (M. Aboramadan), R.Haniffa@hw.ac.
uk (R. Haniffa).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bar.2023.101203
Received 29 October 2021; Received in revised form 17 March 2023; Accepted 21 March 2023
Available online 24 March 2023
0890-8389/© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of British Accounting Association. This is an open access article under the
CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Please cite this article as: Mohammed Alshurafa et al., The British Accounting Review, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bar.2023.101203
M. Alshurafa et al. The British Accounting Review xxx (xxxx) xxx
Sandvik, 2018; Kuruppu, Dissanayake, & de Villiers, 2022). Through newly adopted remote technology channels, NGOs can receive
inputs and feedback from key informants (Scobie, Lee, & Smyth, 2020; Scott & Orlikowski, 2012) that would, inter alia, provide
accessible and safe communication platforms (IFEX, 2020). Moreover, it enables NGOs to share information with stakeholder groups
(Arnaboldi, Busco, & Cuganesan, 2017), engage with less powerful stakeholders (O’Leary, 2017), provide new ways to cooperate with
other organisations (Shumate & Dewitt, 2008), and receive real-time feedback (Bellucci & Manetti, 2017). Similarly, the benefits of
technology during disruptive times have been highlighted in several studies: helping Turkish NGOs plan and deliver their responses to
Syrian beneficiaries (Turkay & Turkay, 2019); communicating with activists in influencing their own government (Ronfeldt, Arquilla,
Fuller, & Fuller, 1998); and, for civic participation and volunteer recruitment after the earthquake and tsunami in 2011 (Cheng,
Mitomo, Otsuka, & Jeon, 2015).
While prior studies have established the benefits of technology in helping the work of NGOs, they do so by treating technology as
being created equal with everyone equally reaping its benefits. In reality, technology can be used as a new tool to colonise the virtual
world, marginalise people in society, as well as perpetuate the oppression of historically excluded populations. The use of technology
also redefines social structures in a big way, influencing how people interrelate and interact with each other, and changing the value
people associate with given processes and practices including that by NGOs. Hence, we extend the debate on the role of technology in
the work of NGOs by adopting the digital postcolonialism1 theoretical perspective espoused by Jandrić and Kuzmanić (2015) to
understand how NGOs, serving in areas where the accountability landscape has been shaped by technology that has been politicised,
enact accountability processes and practices during a disruptive event such as the COVID-19 lockdown. We do this by reporting
findings from semi-structured interviews with selected NGOs directly involved with technology and accountability processes in the
Gaza Strip, a geographic space which has been under Israeli colonialism since 1967, depriving Gazans of real and virtual access to the
world (Dawes, 2015).
We study this phenomenon by asking the following specific questions: How have digital postcolonialism and the COVID-19
pandemic [hereafter the pandemic] lockdown affected accountability relationships between NGOs and their beneficiaries and fun
ders? What are the challenges faced by NGOs in terms of processes and practices in fulfilling downward (beneficiaries) and upward
(funders) accountability? What are the positive outcomes and opportunities of techno-based upward and downward accountability
and to what extent can they be sustained to counter digital postcolonialism and the pandemic lockdown? These questions have been
inadvertently overlooked in the scant literature on accountability and technology. Therefore, we aim to address the above questions to
provide a bigger picture of the impact and repercussions of digital postcolonialism on NGOs’ accountability, and lessons learnt from
the use of technology during disruptive events.
The paper’s contributions are threefold. First, it extends the recent literature addressing the use of technology as a useful tool in
meeting the complex accountability demands faced by NGOs (Agyemang et al., 2019; Kuruppu et al., 2022). Unlike prior studies which
tend to treat technology as a creation that is morally and politically neutral and benefits everyone equally, we used an alternative
theoretical perspective - digital postcolonialism - to counter those notions. Thus, we make a novel contribution to the stream of
literature on technology and NGOs’ accountability by illuminating how NGOs’ upward and downward accountability are implicated as
a result of the digital occupation and digital disempowerment imposed by digital natives. This has implications for our understanding
of power relations and social realities faced by NGOs in their work when adopting technology as an accountability mechanism.
Second, the paper answers the call by Cordery, Belal, Goncharenko, Polzer, and McConville (2020) to consider NGO accountability
in different contexts and also to indirectly contribute to the postcolonialism literature on the exercise of colonial power via technology,
i.e., ‘techno-colonialism’ (Madianou, 2019). Our study considers the practice of accountability by NGOs operating in socially and
politically vulnerable locations which had not really been ‘post’ colonialism in the real sense. We believe our paper is the first to
address this in the context of the Gaza Strip which had been under total military colonisation since 1967 and ended in 2005 following
Israel’s announcement of a unilateral withdrawal and dismantling of its settlements in the Strip. However, since that date, Israel has
adopted a new form of postcolonialism, digital postcolonialism, by depriving people in the Gaza Strip from gaining access to tech
nological products, blocking the Gazans from the virtual world so they remain isolated from the rest of the world, and exercising
stringent control on technology and communication for security purposes to ensure that they are not being used for resistance actions.
Such a powerful exercise of control has implications for local and international NGOs operating in Gaza in building an advanced
technological infrastructure to organise their activities and, hence, accountability practices. The findings enhance our understanding
of the challenges faced by and opportunities available to NGOs operating in such areas in discharging upward and downward
accountability using technology. Although our empirical focus is NGOs working in the Gaza Strip, our contribution is also applicable to
NGOs working in the Global South and faced with numerous forms of digital postcolonialism.
1
It is a newly developed perspective in postcolonial theory within the context of digital technologies. According to Jandrić and Kuzmanić (2015),
it refers to the study of the digital divide between ‘digital natives’ and the rest of the population ‘digital savages’ whose migration to the virtual
world is fenced by mental and material barriers (Van Dijk & Hacker, 2003; ibid). Anderson (2002, p. 644) defines it as “a means of writing a ‘history of
the present’, of coming to terms with the turbulence and uncertainty of contemporary global flows of knowledge and practice.” It does not mean that the old
concept of postcolonialism is over, but the digital formations lead to new possibilities of colonisation through the rapidly moving and evolving
digital spaces and technologies (Ponzanesi, 2020).
2
Third, we contribute to the emerging and limited literature on accountability during crises (Cheng et al., 2015; Perkiss & Moerman,
2020; Sargiacomo & Walker, 2021; Taylor et al., 2014; Turkay & Turkay, 2019) and, specifically, the COVID-19 pandemic (Yu, 2020,
2021). We demonstrate how digital postcolonialism has constrained the digital transformation2 of NGOs’ accountability during the
pandemic in a number of ways. Firstly, severe restrictions imposed by Israel on Palestinian beneficiaries’ access to the virtual world,
perceptions among beneficiaries concerning the possibility of technology being used as a ‘shareveillance’3 tool by NGOs, and the
possibility of digital abuse of women, have caused them to remain on the periphery of the accountability ladder. Secondly, despite the
digital occupation, NGOs have found upward accountability to be easier during the pandemic as funders have lowered their
paper-based upward accountability requirements and allowed them to be replaced with ad hoc technology-based practices. This also
draws our attention to the immense need for the providers of funds to understand the political and social contexts of NGOs when
upward accountability requirements are designed. Finally, the study affirms that technology is not entirely a burden on NGOs in
discharging their accountability as several opportunities arise from its adoption of technology. This provides us with insights into what
strategies have worked for NGOs in discharging accountability during the disruptive period.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section two discusses current debates surrounding NGO accountability and
technology followed by section three which outlines digital postcolonialism as a theoretical perspective to understand how it shapes
the landscape of NGOs’ accountability. Section four presents the research method including background information about the impact
of the pandemic on the Gaza Strip and the dilemma of technology amid poverty and political blockade. Section five provides insights
into the impact of the pandemic on NGOs’ accountability processes in the Gaza Strip, incorporating political, social, cultural, and
economic issues. In the final section, we conclude the paper, highlight the limitations of the study, and suggest avenues for future
research.
2. Digital postcolonialism and NGO accountability in a time of crisis
2.1. Overview of prior research on NGO accountability
The accounting literature is rich with studies on NGO accountability (see e.g., Goddard, 2021; Kuruppu et al., 2022; Murtaza,
2012). Unerman and O’Dwyer (2006) recognise that there are many aspects of NGO accountability stemming from the definitions of
NGOs themselves and their functions or activities which subsequently influence the nature of accountability. According to Kaba
(2021), there are 113 conceptualisations of accountability in the literature, which can generally be divided into two main strands of
research: “calculative accountability” which focuses on relations and processes of accountability (see e.g., Bovens, 2007; O’Dwyer &
Boomsma, 2015), and “narrative accountability” which involves a critical reflection of power, equity, and inclusion (see e.g., Messner,
2009; Roberts, 1991; Shearer, 2002). In the former case, accountability depends on the type of relationships and distance between the
NGO and its stakeholders. Hence, accountability relations have been broadly categorised into upward (accountability to funders/
donors) and downward (accountability to beneficiaries) while accountability processes are described as vertical (formal or hierar
chical) and horizontal (informal or felt accountability). In the case of narrative accountability, the context within which NGOs operate
affects their activities and, in turn, their accountability.
Consequently, it has been proposed that accountability needs to be more comprehensive to include parties other than those
contractual parties to whom the entity is always held accountable by the terms of the contract (Shearer, 2002). O’Dwyer and Boomsma
(2015) suggest that NGOs should systematically and equally address the voluntary sense of “self-responsibility” within NGOs and the
needs of the powerful, e.g., funders and regulators, as well as the powerless stakeholders, e.g., beneficiaries. Andrews (2014) argues
that NGOs should have more time and space to interact with beneficiaries and listen to them through regular and intimate
on-the-ground communications to identify their problems and to design programmes that address these problems. The impact of NGOs
is not attainable without being connected to grassroots groups that are marginalised and disempowered (Ebrahim, 2005; O’Dwyer &
Unerman, 2008).
In this study, we combine the two strands of the literature to explore how society, politics, culture, and power interweaved in
shaping processes and practices of accountability during the pandemic. In the following sections, we present a review of the literature
on NGO accountability during disruptive events and the use of technology4 in aiding accountability relations and processes within the
context of digital postcolonialism, which is adopted as the theoretical perspective in our study.
2
Digital transformation is a holistic effort to revise NGOs’ core processes and services beyond digitisation and digitalisation, taking in a “full stack
review of organisational policies, current processes and user needs and results in a complete revision of the existing and the creation of new digital services. The
outcome of digital transformation efforts focuses among others on the satisfaction of user needs, new forms of service delivery, and the expansion of the user
base” (Mergel et al., 2019, p. 12).
3
Birchall (2016) described conditions of imposed involuntary data sharing as “shareveillance”.
4
Technology can be categorised as follows: communication technology (e.g., internet, cell phones) and electrical technology (computers, artificial
intelligence, software, audio and visual), medical technology (diagnostic, surgical, etc.), transport technology (e.g., GPS, flight), energy technology
(solar panel, wind turbines), and mechanical technology (manufacturing).
3
2.2. NGO accountability during the pandemic
“Accountability practices had to change and adapt, thereby changing objects and objectives, following new rules, shifting responsibilities,
and using new means” (Leoni et al., 2022, p. 3).
Effective NGOs are those that learn from their previous experiences (Senge, 1990), are able to remain alert to rapid social changes
and instability in the external environment (Bendell & Unies, 2006), and respond to public concerns and realities (Grant & Keohane,
2005). Bendell and Unies (2006) state that emergencies and crises challenge the four main NGO accountability-related questions: Who
is accountable; to whom; for what; and, how are they accountable? Aside from the first three questions, finding an answer to the ‘How’
question is particularly complicated and underdeveloped (Agyemang et al., 2019) especially when facing disruptive events.
Accountability during times of emergency and crises has to be “flexible” in order to respond to rapid change (Yates & Difrancesco,
2022) as well as “moral” in order to persuade an audience (Bui, Moses, & Dumay, 2022). It should remain “reflexive” to the social,
political, and cultural systems, and not be treated as a rigid objective phenomenon (Shenkin & Coulson, 2007; Messner, 2009), and it
needs to “convey” clear and uncontradictory messages (de Villiers & Molinari, 2022).
The pandemic may change the nature of accountability for many NGOs. For instance, amid the lockdown, NGOs had to shut down
their physical workspaces to ensure staff safety while others had to dismiss some of their staff due to financial constraints (O’Connell,
2020). According to the International Labour Organisation, working hours dropped by 4.5% in the first quarter of 2020 and 10.5%
during the second quarter (International Labour Organisation, 2020). The decline in staff capacity during lockdowns harms NGOs’
ability to enforce accountability mechanisms as well as delay audits and surveillance mechanisms (IFEX, 2020). Likewise, other
accountability measures that require community participation, such as social auditing and a participatory approach through group
sessions (Ebrahim, 2003; Leoni et al., 2022), cannot be implemented due to strict social distancing and quarantine regulations (Mullard
& Aarvik, 2020). Consequently, accountability that involves complex and dynamic measures and needs concrete evidence in the
bureaucratic cycle is not feasible during lockdowns (Fenwick, 2010).
The Open Society Foundation President, Patrick Gaspard, addressed grantees, saying that “COVID-19 may require shifts in strategy,
reprioritisation, and adjustments” (Alliance Magazine, 2020). Many NGOs have found that their accountability can no longer be
perceived as issue-specific. Instead, they have needed to consider the pandemic implications on health, social, political, psychological,
and financial aspects (Mullard & Aarvik, 2020). Hence, the pandemic may have altered the attention of NGOs towards a socially
informed approach rather than a “one size fits all” accountability mechanism (Goddard, 2021). Widening forms of accountability, and
building social relations inside and outside organisations during the pandemic lockdown, became vital for NGOs to remain connected
with their stakeholders (Crovini, Schaper, & Simoni, 2022).
However, Leoni et al. (2022) highlight the dangers of the shift in accountability mechanisms during COVID-19, such as less scrutiny
of decisions, e.g., the UK Coronavirus Act 2020 (Sian & Smyth, 2022), and the spread of fear (Antonelli, Bigoni, Funnell, & Cafaro,
2022). Yu (2021) also underlines how increased transparency during crises could allow states to use accounting numbers and big data
in their favour.
2.3. Technology and NGO accountability
Technology is a broad term that includes “technological products (e.g., website), strategies to manage and sustain technology use (e.g.,
organisational documentation), interactive processes that contribute to design (e.g., use of scenarios), and changes in practice that supports
technology adoption” (Merkel et al., p. 3). NGOs, like other organisations, look forward to technological inventions to help them in their
tasks (CHS Alliance, 2020). Among the accountability technology used in the workplace are computer software and hardware, In
formation Communications Technologies5 (ICT), and social media, which became prevalent during the lockdown.6
Research on the role of technology in accounting (de Villiers & Molinari, 2022; Moll & Yigitbasioglu, 2019) to achieve specific
modes of accountability remains lacking (Petrakaki, Hayes, & Introna, 2009; Agostino, Arnaboldi, & Lema, 2021; Arnaboldi et al.,
2017; Scott & Orlikowski, 2012). There is also far less consideration of the interrelationship between technology and NGO
accountability during crises (Knudsen, 2020). Prior to the pandemic, technology had facilitated NGOs not only in their administrative
and communication tasks but also aided in creating a database for analysis and organising relations with stakeholders (Rentschler &
Potter, 1996). However, the pandemic acted as a catalyst for the digital transformation of NGO accountability as they faced an uphill
task to keep beneficiaries and staff safe and healthy while also ensuring the continuity of working from home with limited resources
(Technology Association of Grantmakers, 2020) as well as continuing to disclose to the public their plans, fund sources, and dis
bursements via official websites (CHS Alliance, 2020). Moreover, the pandemic lockdown has given social media a central role in
interpreting realities and sharing emotions (Lazzini, Lazzini, Balluchi, & Mazza, 2022) as well as creating interactive rather than
mono-directional forms of accountability (Landi, Costantini, Fasan, & Bonazzi, 2022).
COVID-19 has redefined accountability expectations and requirements from technology. It is no longer used only for marketing and
5
ICT (Information Communications Technology) refers to the products of technology that exist as an alternative to person-to-person commu
nication - the phone, internet, television, or radio. In order to facilitate organisational processes, most NGOs use these tools for their efficiency,
accountability, and services.
6
We understand technology could refer to other products such as big data, mass media, and artificial intelligence; however, they remain outside
the scope of our paper.
4
fundraising purposes (Bhimani & Willcocks, 2014) or to disseminate activities as a legitimate tool (Bellucci & Manetti, 2017). Instead,
NGOs make use of technology to disclose their strategies, share content, collect opinions, engage with beneficiaries to respond to high
accountability demands from funders and effectively discharge accountability to beneficiaries. Neu, Saxton, Rahaman, and Everett
(2019) argue that technology is expected to affect how accountability is disseminated and communicated in future. For instance,
Zoom, Teams, Webinars, and WhatsApp, which have been used extensively by organisations during the pandemic, may possibly
replace traditional accountability practices such as focus groups, field visits, and observations, if they are found to be more effective.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube could start a dialogue with multiple stakeholders to collect, dismiss,
and disclose information. Dialogic rather than monologic communication would add more stakeholders and create a public space for
interaction and response to accountability demands. These accountability conversations could result in a positive social change by
including a wider group of stakeholders, e.g., funders, recipients of goods and services, and members, in one virtual place (Cordery,
Crawford, Breen, & Morgan, 2018), thus making holistic accountability possible (O’Dwyer & Unerman, 2008; Andreaus & Costa,
2014). However, Yu (2020) cautions that reliance on technology for accountability and decision-making may serve surveillance
purposes since influential stakeholders may have divergent views and require radical technology changes to meet their accountability
and decision-making needs. Similarly, NGOs need to evaluate if data provided by available technology are sufficient for their full
discharge of accountability (Bhimani & Willcocks, 2014).
As the implications of the pandemic on NGOs and other organisations’ accountability processes are still currently unfolding, care is
needed not to address the role of technology in simplistic binary good-bad terms or treat it as value-neutral, but to seriously consider
the underlying circumstances or context because we need to understand why technology adoption has been successful in some areas
where NGOs operate but may be more problematic in others. Consequently, the postcolonial context may provide answers to the
dilemma faced by NGOs working in locations where technology is lacking due to the denial of access to the virtual world by digital
postcolonialism.
3. Reproducing postcolonial relationships through technology
“Once a few white men moved beyond the atmosphere, they became newly, artificially human by virtue of the nonhuman space around
them, cast as universal representatives by virtue of their transcendent, hazardous location” (Redfield, 2002, p. 796).
In this paper, we employ the postcolonial perspective7 to investigate the influence of postcolonialism, focusing on digital post
colonialism (Jandrić & Kuzmanić, 2015) on NGO accountability during the pandemic. We mobilise several notions of digital post
colonialism such as the “digital divide8” (Van Dijk & Hacker, 2003), “digital occupation9” (Tawil-Souri, 2012), “techno-colonialism10”
(Madianou, 2019), “digital illiteracy”, “digital unaffordability”, and “digital disempowerment”, which collectively refers to the
disparity between the modern coloniser and the colonised who is deprived of technology, the division and unequal access between
those included and excluded from technology (Van Dijk, 2006), and the lack of intellectual and physical experience or capability,
computers, digital skills, and usage opportunities (Van Dijk, 1999). This theoretical framework results from the interdisciplinary
nature of the postcolonial theory to study postcolonialism, technology, society, and politics (Redfield, 2002). It reveals the re
lationships between users and non-users of technology and the North and South. The South’s migration to postmodernism through
virtual ways is halted by this digital postcolonialism (Jandrić & Kuzmanić, 2015).
Postcolonialism is “a practice of domination involving the subjugation of one people by another through military, economic and political
means” (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018, p. 116). We, therefore, argue that digital postcolonialism makes technology a tool of surveillance or
“shareveillance” and suppression of the colonised so that they remain deprived of the opportunity to join the virtual world (Birchall,
2016; Madianou, 2019). Digital postcolonialism is not about how technology is used but the extent to which technology is driven to
achieve postcolonialism (Dawes, 2015). Since colonisation is an ideology pursued by cultural, political, economic, and digital
exploitation (Redfield, 2002), digital postcolonialism can be seen as attempts by the coloniser to continually maintain territorial space
(Van Dijk & Hacker, 2003) as well as technical control of the virtual space in the technology realm (Redfield, 2002). It opposes the
essence of technology that should contribute to globalisation and a connected world instead of subjugating indigenous people (Jandrić
& Kuzmanić, 2015; Gurung, 2018). Risam (2018) comments that the forms of subjugation currently encompass digital knowledge
production to decentre indigenous people; hence, to dismantle colonial power requires the dismantling of digital power.
Said (1993) mentions that geography and possession of land are at the heart of imperialism. From a technological perspective,
Jandrić and Kuzmanić (2015) emphasise that territoriality or digital geographies are key to sustaining digital postcolonialism and,
these days, the boundaries of the virtual world are identified to produce the digital space conquered by the colonisers. Redfield (2002,
p. 795) mentions that technology “reflects a practical shadow of empire” for the sake of colonisation of earthly and digital territories. The
colonisers interact with virtual space to create new realities through physical violence, for instance, via removal from the World Wide
7
The term postcolonialism contains two words: post and colonialism. However, postcolonialism does not mean post-independence, yet the prefix
‘post’ entails what comes after the beginning of colonialism in its social, political, cultural, and economic impact (Childs & Williams, 2014).
8
A term attributable to the digital natives (the settlers) upon the digital savages (the colonised) to describe barriers in the ability and use of
communication technologies, following the poverty line.
9
It is a multifaceted process that combines the relationship between territorial and technological enclosure to control the colonised.
10
It is “the constitutive role that data and digital innovation play in entrenching power asymmetries between refugees and aid agencies and ultimately
inequalities in the global context” (Madianou, 2019, p. 1).
5
Web (WWW). In this sense, Jandrić and Kuzmanić (2015) argue that digital postcolonialism has more power in shaping virtual ter
ritories than traditional postcolonialism. The digital world has no pre-existing natives who originally inhabited their land. Instead, it
has white western inventors such as Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and others who are digital natives who can place
others wherever they want across the WWW.
Technology is understood not just as an instrument of communication but as a basis for a whole new social or political order (Barry,
2001) and the need for technology in organising societies and maintaining social order became crucial during the pandemic. NGOs had
to suddenly shift to technology to enact their accountability to beneficiaries, funders, and other stakeholders. However, the turbulence
caused by the lockdown to stop the spread of the virus has created new instability to accountability given the existing digital post
colonialism. Crises prove to influence accountability and they sometimes cause breakdowns of accountability. Baker (2014) concludes
that breakdowns of accountability due to a lack of communication before Hurricane Katrina caused the death of thousands of innocent
people when the hurricane struck the Gulf of Mexico. The large-scale disturbance altered opinions, measures and, hence,
accountability.
Our study context, presented in the next section, is different as it involves a geographic space where its people are among the
poorest, globally, and have been subjected to digital postcolonialism and systematically excluded from the virtual space. Thus, the
techno-social developments that moved most nations towards modernity are at a slow pace, which has implications for NGOs’ work
and accountability in this space. We aim to explore and interpret how digital postcolonialism affects technology availability and,
subsequently, shapes the accountability landscape of NGOs working in the occupied geographic space during the COVID-19 lockdown.
4. Research method
4.1. Study context
The Gaza Strip is a tiny slice of land measuring 360 km2 on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Gaza shares 13 km of borders
with Egypt in the south, 59 km with Israel in the north and the east, and a coastline of 40 km to the west (Al-Hallaq & Elaish, 2008). It
remained under Israeli civil administration till late 1993, when the Oslo Accords11 were signed by the Israeli Prime Minster and the
Palestinian President. By 2018. the people of Gaza were 25 times poorer than they were when the Oslo Accord was signed (Norwegian
Refugee Council, 2018). The average unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip stood at 49% where 80% of the population relied on
humanitarian aid in 2021 (UNRWA, 2021).
In 2005, Israel announced its “disengagement plan” from the Gaza Strip, in which 19 settlements accommodating over 7000 settlers
were dismantled (Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2008). As a result, Israel abandoned its responsibility for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and
avoided direct contact with them (Tawil-Souri, 2012). The “besieged enclave” of the Gaza Strip has become regarded as the “world’s
largest open-air prison” (Norwegian Refugee Council, 2018). As of 2023, there are approximately 2 million people living in the Strip
today, of whom 70% (1.4 million) are Palestinians who vacated their homes in 1948 and lived in refugee camps after the “Nakbah”
when the State of Israel was established (Humaid, 2023). While the population of the Gaza Strip is still very young, 50% of the people
are traumatised by the war, at risk of suicide, and in need of urgent psychosocial support (World Health Organisation, 2020). However,
the people of Gaza are well-educated, and the literacy rate of its population is 96.8% (Middle East Eye, 2018).
Between 2013 and 2015, Palestine suffered losses of US$436–1150 million in the technology sector due to Israeli restrictions
including the absence of 3G (World Bank, 2016). Israel controls frequencies, bandwidths, switches, spectrums, area codes, access
speeds, transmission towers, equipment, and electricity in Gaza (Dawes, 2015). In 1996, Bezeq (Israel’s telecommunications provider)
spokesman, Roni Mandelbaum, remarked that Palestinians “are not entitled to any signs of sovereignty … They have to rely on the
infrastructure we supply them” (Prusher, 1996). Israel does not allow Palestinians to develop their technological infrastructure but, at
the same time, allows Israeli telecommunication companies to illegally12 develop theirs in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank,
causing US$60 million in losses per annum to the Palestinian National Authority (Mesleh, 2022). This has caused a surge in the price of
telecommunications in Palestine, making it above the international average and placing Palestine in the 138th position for internet
prices globally in 2017 (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2020). Palestinians pay 5.9% of their income on telecommunications
compared to only 1.13% in Israel with the international average recorded as 3.4% in 2017. On the ICT Development Index (2017),
Palestine is ranked 123rd, whilst Israel is 23rd. The technology sector employed less than 1% of the total workforce in Palestine, and its
contribution to the GNP did not exceed 4% in 2018 (Mesleh, 2022). Conversely, in 2020, the technology sector contributed to 15% of
Israeli GDP, generating US$57 billion in exports of high-tech products and services (Polish Institute of International Affairs, 2022).
According to the national statistics published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (2020), only 9% of Palestinian families
in the Gaza Strip had personal computers, 22.2% had laptops, and 14.3% had tablets in 2017. Those figures are significantly lower than
both the West Bank and the statistics published in 2007 due to growing poverty among the Gazans. The use of technology in the Gaza
Strip is minimum, directed mainly towards mobile phones (75% of the population have smartphones) and primitive mobiles (95% of
11
Oslo Accords or the “Declaration of Principles” is a political agreement between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel in 1993
to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. As part of the agreement, the Palestinian National Authority was created and was supposed to be granted
self-governance over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in return for the PLO’s recognition of Israel.
12
According to Article 36 Telecommunications of the Oslo Interim Agreement Annex III 1995, “Israel recognises that the Palestinian side has the right
to build and operate separate and independent communication systems and infrastructures including telecommunication networks, a television network and a
radio network” (World Bank, 2016, p. 1).
6
the population use mobile services). The average download speed in Palestine is 7.7 megabytes per second, which is the third slowest in
the world in 2021 (Mesleh, 2022). Although Palestinians in the West Bank have access to the internet and mobile services from Israeli
providers, those in the Gaza Strip have only 0.2% and 0.4% access to Israeli internet and mobile services, respectively (ibid).
Overall, Gaza is a landscape of economic hardship and fragility with few internal resources to deal with the pandemic. Many
Palestinians in Gaza depend on NGOs to meet their basic needs and job opportunities (iPalestine, 2020). COVID-19 added to the
devastating humanitarian crisis caused by more than 16 years of blockade. Hamas, the shadow government, announced a 30-day
lockdown over all five major cities in Gaza on 6 March 2020; this was later extended to the end of May 2020 but continued to
impose lockdowns in areas recording numerous waves of infection. In addition, the two main crossing points to Egypt (Rafah) and
Israel (Erez) were closed for a significant period. The Gaza Strip had access to only 40 intensive-care-unit beds, a few hundred
COVID-19 test kits, and 20 ventilation devices (Balousha & Holmes, 2020). By July 2021, less than 5% of people in the Gaza Strip had
received a COVID-19 vaccination (Alsaafin, 2021).
4.2. Research sample
There are 846 active NGOs (88 international and 758 Palestinian) working in the Gaza Strip that collectively spent US$137.3
million in 2021 (Palestinian Ministry of Interior, 2022). Purposive sampling was adopted in selecting employees working in 10 Pal
estinian and international NGOs identified through our contacts because we aimed to select NGOs that attempted to adopt technology
during the pandemic to understand how they had coped with their work and what challenges/opportunities they may have had. The
selected NGOs continued their operations during the lockdown and all employees were required to work from home for certain periods
using different technologies to interact with their beneficiaries and funders. This was checked when we initially approached our in
terviewees to participate in this study and this represented our main criteria for purposive sampling (Ames, Glenton, & Lewin, 2019).
Our interviewees differed in their position (e.g., chief executives, IT experts, and project coordinators/officers), age, gender, and
academic background. We conducted interviews until we were able to achieve the desired data saturation, which resulted in 20
interviewees.
We chose interviewees who interact with beneficiaries and funders in order to obtain a comprehensive overview of technology-
based accountability relations during COVID-19. To protect the anonymity of the interviewees, they were coded based on the
origin of their NGO (INGO for International NGOs and PNGO for Palestinian NGOs) and their position, e.g., INGO Poverty Reduction
Manager. Where two interviewees occupy the same position in the same NGO origin, each has a different number e.g., INGO IT Expert
1 and INGO IT Expert 2 (see Table 1).
Table 1
Overview of interviews undertaken.
# NGO Scope Origin Position Interview Interview Date Quotation Code
Duration
1. Charity International Chief Executive Officer 58 min June 2020 INGO - CEO 1
2. Charity International Chief Executive Officer 75 min June 2020 INGO - CEO 2
3. Mental Health Palestinian Mental Health Therapist 45 min June 2020 PNGO - Mental Health Therapist 1
4. Mental Health Palestinian Mental Health Therapist 40 min June 2020 PNGO - Mental Health Therapist 2
5. Health Programmes International Project Coordinator 33 min June 2020 INGO - Project Coordinator
6. Community Palestinian Senior Programme Officer 46 min June 2020 PNGO - Senior Programme Officer
Development
7. Community Palestinian Programme Officer 40 min June 2020 PNGO - Programme Officer 1
Development
8. Youth Development Palestinian Programme Officer 30 min June 2020 PNGO - Programme Officer 2
9. Poverty Reduction International Saving Lives Manager 45 min July 2020 INGO - Saving Lives Manager
10. Disability Inclusion International Education Coordinator 50 min May 2021 INGO - Education Coordinator
11. Disability Inclusion International Educator 36 min May 2021 INGO - Educator 1
12. Disability Inclusion International Educator 44 min May 2021 INGO - Educator 2
13. Human Rights Palestinian HR Director 34 min May 2021 PNGO - HR Director
14. Community International Business Development 48 min June 2021 INGO - Business Development Officer
Development Officer 1
15. Community International Business Development 40 min August 2021 INGO - Business Development Officer
Development Officer 2
16. Human Rights Palestinian IT Expert 25 min September PNGO - IT Expert 1
2021
17. Charity International IT Expert 41 min April 2022 INGO - IT Expert 1
18. Charity International IT Expert 43 min April 2022 INGO - IT Expert 2
19. Poverty Reduction International Food Security Officera 47 min April 2022 INGO - Food Security Officer
20. Charity International Finance Managerb 35 min May 2022 INGO - Finance Manager
a
The interviewee’s NGO has no employee responsible for IT in their office in Gaza; hence, he is responsible for looking after NGO software,
designed to interact with funders, vendors, and beneficiaries.
b
The interviewee’s NGO has no employee responsible for IT in their office in Gaza; hence, he is responsible for looking after the NGO’s technology
infrastructure.
7
4.3. Conducting and analysing semi-structured interviews
We developed a semi-structured interview guide with questions covering themes concerning the nature of accountability practices
in ongoing projects, accountability under COVID-19, challenges and opportunities, and relations with beneficiaries and funders. We
conducted a pilot study with two interviewees in May 2020 to ensure that the interview questions were comprehensible. This resulted
in some questions being refined,13 and questions that seemed to have been duplicated were removed (Qu & Dumay, 2011).
Due to COVID-19 restrictions on travel, interviews were conducted remotely by phone and WhatsApp based on the time convenient
for the interviewees. The interviews took place between June 2020 and May 2022, providing us with multiple examples of how
accountability was enacted under different circumstances and how the challenges and opportunities that emerged from technology
were addressed after the lockdown. Before each interview, we explained the purpose of the interview and the research project,
received the interviewees’ consent to participate in the study, and addressed terms of confidentiality and anonymity. During the
interviews, we asked specific but major questions in a different order which is a common practice in semi-structured interviews
(Gillham, 2000). Notes were taken during the interviews to identify unique answers not related to themes in our interview guide, link
the questions together and point to any change in the structure of the question. Interestingly, the interviewees were open in telling us
about the impact of postcolonialism in general and digital postcolonialism in particular on their operations and accountability
discharge. They mentioned their personal stories and challenges to enact accountability to funders and especially beneficiaries whose
extreme poverty and digital occupation constituted a significant part of the interview narratives.
Each interview lasted between 25 and 75 min (the average is 43 min). Explanations were given to the interviewees, and the wording
of the questions changed to make sure they were comprehended by the interviewee (Robson, 2002). The interviews were recorded and
conducted in the local language (Arabic), and then transcribed and translated into English by the first two authors, who are native
Arabic speakers. We did not translate verbatim but a general representation of what was said without losing the meaning because the
Arabic sentence structure is different from the English sentence structure (Igaab, 2015; Al-Jarf, 2022). We transcribed and translated
each interview immediately after it was conducted rather than waiting until all interviews were completed. This enabled us to un
dertake an initial analysis and have some knowledge about the data while still fresh in our minds (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Once
transcription and translation was completed, we went over the narratives to check their relevance and accuracy.
We used thematic analysis to analyse themes/patterns that emerged either “top-down” from the theoretical perspective, such as the
impact of digital postcolonialism on the availability of technology and security of NGOs’ data, as well as accountability practices to
beneficiaries and funders, or the data-linked “bottom-up” themes, such as cultural and social realities and their impact on account
ability including the new prospects of NGO accountability in the context of the Gaza Strip. We started thematic analysis by labelling
our data under different codes and collating all the relevant coded data extracts within the identified themes. The themes to be used in
presenting the results of data analysis in the next section were reviewed and refined, so they are separate and interesting, and there is
enough coded data under each theme.
5. NGO accountability and technology in the era of digital postcolonialism and COVID-19
We approached interviewees to explore the impact of digital postcolonialism on technology and, hence, their accountability in the
Gaza Strip during the pandemic. Clearly, the pandemic intensified the role of technology in their accountability practices to benefi
ciaries and funders, yet digital postcolonialism has left it with noticeable challenges. As a result, the interviewees’ narratives touched
upon a wide range of technology-based accountability processes and practices within and outside their organisations from broader
political, financial, social, and cultural perspectives.
5.1. Maneuvered accountability to marginalised beneficiaries
In the accounting literature on NGOs, (see e.g., O’Dwyer & Unerman, 2008; Unerman & O’Dwyer, 2010), the recipients of their
services are referred to as “beneficiaries” (Goncharenko, 2019), and their accountability potential to the less powerful is labelled as
downward accountability (Rahmani, 2012). However, Uddin and Belal (2019) replaced the term downward accountability with
“beneficiary accountability” which addresses how NGOs promote their engagement and participate in addressing the needs of the
beneficiaries (see e.g., Brett, 2003; Mercelis, Wellens, & Jegers, 2016; Nikkhah & Redzuan, 2009). This theme explores the challenges
faced by Palestinian and international NGOs that have impeded their engagement and discharge of accountability to their beneficiaries
in the Gaza Strip during the COVID-19 lockdown.
5.1.1. Digital occupation, unaffordability, and illiteracy

This theme addresses how technology shaped NGOs’ accountability to their beneficiaries during the lockdown from a digital
postcolonial point of view and the challenges they encountered. Unlike the global North, regions suffering from fragile and challenging
contexts were found to be less prepared, competent, or able to use technology during the lockdown (Motteram, Dawson, & Al-Masri,
2020). The inability to make the most of technology during the lockdown was admitted by an interviewee, “The pandemic experience
comes along with the unreliable role of technology in Gaza” [INGO - Business Development Officer 2]. As argued by Tawil-Souri (2012),
13
The interview questions were refined to ensure they are understandable, constructive of conversations, and aligned with research questions.
8
despite Israel announcing its disengagement plan in 2005, the Gaza Strip was not decolonised because technology mechanisms were
used to create a “digital occupation” to contain Gaza. This new form of occupation can be discerned from the statement made by
Israel’s former prime minister banning any future Palestinian state from having any control over its electromagnetic field (Tawil-Souri,
2012). This supports Jandrić and Kuzmanić’s (2015, p. 28) argument that “Technology and colonialism are dialectically intertwined – one
cannot be thought of without the other.” Israel currently uses very advanced technological surveillance mechanisms such as sonic im
agery and gamma-radiation detectors to control the people of Gaza who, at the same time, are deprived of basic technological products.
For instance, Gaza has access to only 2G services that allow limited data transmission (Sawafta, 2018). People in Gaza cannot use
mobile mapping, e.g., GPS and financial capabilities, e.g., PayPal, because Israel does not allow these technologies on Palestinian
networks (Dawes, 2015).
Given the limited accessibility to technology and the relatively higher price that Palestinians have to pay, INGO – Educator 2
commented that her NGO planned to temporarily use the old-fashioned radio channels to communicate with student beneficiaries and
their families and to reach out to the maximum number of beneficiaries using low-cost radio that does not need internet, electricity, or
smartphones to counter “digital unaffordability” among many Gazans. Likewise, INGO - Saving Lives Manager mentioned that his NGO
had invested heavily in purchasing an international application to distribute food parcels to the beneficiaries. Unfortunately, it did not
work as intended because most Gazan beneficiaries cannot afford smartphones so they could not use the application. This resulted in
new and existing beneficiaries, whose life circumstances had deteriorated due to COVID-19, not being able to receive services from
these NGOs. This limited the exercise of accountability for vulnerable groups who needed them the most, as highlighted by the
following interviewee:
“Unfortunately, I was only able to deal with cases with access to technology such as WhatsApp or Skype, which are not many.
The economic situation in the Gaza Strip left people in extreme poverty. Even those who have the internet lack the experience to
use technology. During the lockdown, the need for mental health therapy has significantly increased; however, we were
shocked that not all families had access to the internet or smart mobile phones that would enable them to record videos or watch
the videos that we share with them” [PNGO - Mental Health Therapist 2].
The interviewees asserted that they had tried their best to keep in touch with and encourage beneficiaries to participate online.
However, the main obstacles were the financial hardship of families and the soaring prices of technology products and services caused
by years of digital occupation. For example, internet bandwidth is sold by Israel to Palestinian service providers at a higher rate than
inside Israel, making it more expensive to Palestinian users (Tawil-Souri, 2012). Digital occupation hinders not only technology
accessibility but also power supply as Gazans have power for only six to 8 h each day due to a shortage of fuel supply to the power plant
attacked by Israel in 2006 (B’Tselem, 2006; United Nations, 2006; BBC, 2010). Thus, the task of NGOs becomes harder, as mentioned
by the following interviewee:
“Instead of conducting one face-to-face gathering to raise awareness to beneficiaries on how to use the e-vouchers, I had to make
individual phone calls to every beneficiary telling him/her how to use it. A virtual Zoom meeting could have replaced these
extensive efforts; however, our beneficiaries do not have access or ability to use technology” [INGO - Food Security Officer].
Additionally, INGO - IT Expert 1, used the term “digital gap” to reflect on the varying abilities of their beneficiaries in using
technology as a tool for feedback and communication. Interviewees brought our attention to the “digital illiteracy” of their benefi
ciaries who cannot use advanced technological applications:
“We used WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. I did not use Zoom and Google Meet because most of our beneficiaries are not
familiar with these applications” [INGO - Educator 1].
Technology has also become a complex construct and a bottleneck to productivity for NGOs and their left-behind beneficiaries
(Merkel et al., 2007). Despite the NGOs’ efforts, the pandemic starkly demonstrated that a flourishing life and minimum degree of
living in dignity depend on digital literacy and affordability. Therefore, NGOs found it difficult to have a dialogic engagement with
beneficiaries to increase their efficiency and effectiveness within the existing technology-based system of accountability and re
sponsibility (Dillard & Vinnari, 2019). The dissemination of information to beneficiaries, using participatory reviews, having response
mechanisms, keeping them connected, and developing a shared discourse with beneficiaries require knowledge (Jenkins, 2006;
O’Dwyer & Unerman, 2008) on how to access a digital realm which did not exist during the lockdown for the marginalised benefi
ciaries such as the Bedouins (nomadic Arab tribes), people with disabilities, elderly people, and those who live in the buffer zone.14
During crises, more voices and participation are required to strengthen trust and social cohesion (Manetti, Bellucci, & Bagnoli, 2017),
but the pandemic circumstances forced NGOs to accept that they were unable to fully discharge their accountability to beneficiaries
who could neither afford nor use technology:
“We had to take the idea of technology-based accountability to beneficiaries out of our heads” [INGO - IT Expert 1].
To address this, INGO - Educator 2 added that her NGO had to re-design accountability mechanisms in line with ad hoc reachability
to beneficiaries, rather than inclusion, in order to maintain as much accountability as possible. Technology exacerbated inequality
among Gazans with the most deprived being further marginalised. Consequently, NGOs found themselves having to change their
14
Buffer zone is a military no-go zone inside the Gaza Strip near the fence with Israel in its northern and eastern perimeter where movement is
strictly prohibited.
9
selection criteria of beneficiaries receiving their service by selecting only those familiar with technology and those with access to it
and, subsequently, dropping others from the list:
“Unfortunately, the scoring sheet criteria to select beneficiaries have changed from poverty, geographical location, and age to
only availability” [INGO - Education Coordinator].
“We stopped receiving people in our office, and hence we did not add new beneficiaries but instead took new beneficiaries from
our waiting list. Not a single beneficiary was added to our data during this period” [INGO – Educator 1].
In summary, beneficiaries’ disempowerment, and exclusion from NGOs’ accountability processes during the COVID-19 lockdown is
an outcome of the digital occupation of the Gaza Strip that has reinforced the digital divide causing widespread “digital unafford
ability” and “digital illiteracy” among the colonised. Palestinians are therefore unable to cope, adapt, and re-tool with the rapid
technological development elsewhere (Tawil-Souri, 2012) because of the limits imposed on them in joining the information revolution
and gaining knowledge to participate in the digital world. Barry (2001, p. 1) refers to this as a “fragile technological culture” that
prevents people from crossing legal and social barriers.
5.1.2. Techno-colonialism and voluntary digital resistance

Although current research on accountability draws on technology as an effective and free way of communication during the
lockdown (see e.g., Chen et al., 2020; Cinelli et al., 2020), our interviewees were concerned about digital data security collected on the
most vulnerable beneficiaries in their communication channels being part of “digital shareveillance”. Their concerns are reasonable
because unaccountable private/global firms like Google and Facebook have often used the Global South as a testbed for new and
unregulated forms of technology, data collection, extraction, and deployment (Couldry & Mejias, 2019). Similarly, psychographic data
on millions of Facebook users had been collected by Cambridge Analytica in 2010 for political lobbying purposes (Brown, 2020).
Madianou (2019, p. 10) states that “refugee camps are used as testing grounds for innovation and the scaling up of business models.” She
adds that “techno-colonialism” reinvigorates colonial power by collecting data to reproduce the social order. Interestingly, such vi
olations occurred during another epidemic (the Ebola outbreak in 2014) when international NGOs were given access to detailed phone
records of Liberian citizens, which provided a competitive advantage for some NGOs (Couldry & Mejias, 2019). Much of the tech
nology that led to activities online during the lockdown were programmes developed by private firms which are susceptible to abuse
and are often unsuccessful in achieving their objectives (Tan, 2020). The Technology Association of Grantmakers (2020) highlights
that 3.7 billion people around the globe have unsecured internet connections which increases their cybersecurity risk. This implies that
NGOs’ staff and beneficiaries need to be wary of sensitive information on their personal computers as they could be easily hacked:
“I cannot ensure the security and safety of sessions with beneficiaries. Zoom could be hacked easily, and any information
exchanged during these sessions may allow hackers to get private and sensitive information about our beneficiaries” [PNGO -
Mental Health Therapist 2].
“All Skype sessions and WhatsApp calls were conducted on my laptop. I cannot guarantee the security of these devices. They did
not provide us with anti-virus applications to protect our devices” [PNGO - Mental Health Therapist 1].
The interviewees were worried and concerned about the rapid move to the technology realm, leaving everything they know and do
with beneficiaries’ information saved online in the form of datasets that could include, for example, their address, neighbourhood,
contact number, and other sensitive information such as health conditions:
“To protect our data, we added extra security measures and allowed access only to the head of sections. Other employees must
request data they want from their line manager who would take it from the server” [INGO - IT Expert 1].
Accountability practices are affected by techno-colonialism that seeks to entrench colonial power (Madianou, 2019) with Israel
being the sole provider of technology and the internet to the Gaza Strip. Technologies used by NGOs and people in the Strip are entirely
controlled by Israel with nowhere to hide. A simple landline phone call between two cities in Gaza is routed through Israel, including
internet switches being located in Israel. For Mignolo (2011), this is the dark side of modernity. Techno-colonialism offers a bag of tools
for the coloniser to locate the subaltern in cyberspace (Gajjala, 2013). This appears further problematic in the Gaza Strip due to
political constraints linked to the long-standing blockade. The persistent Palestinian-Israeli conflict causes uncertainty and resistance
regarding the use of technology:
“In the Gaza Strip, for security reasons, people are not allowed to use social media or technology to communicate with people
that they do not know” [INGO – Educator 1].
Data about beneficiaries is essential to assess accountability, receiving feedback, and the impact of NGOs’ activities on benefi
ciaries’ lives, as well as helping NGOs to showcase their contribution and increase their visibility and branding to secure more funds
(Purtschert, 2016; Madianou, 2019). Unfortunately, the Israeli Mossad (The national intelligence agency of Israel) uses social media,
emails, and phone calls to contact Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to collect information about the Palestinian resistance movements
(Donnison, 2010). During the lockdown, the majority of Palestinians, who are day labourers, experienced increased anxiety and stress
levels as their income had completely stopped and the Mossad officials were aware that their need for NGOs was amplified in the
absence of government support (Al Zabadi, Haj-Yahya, Yaseen, & Alhroub, 2022; Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2022).
Therefore, there were many instances whereby Israeli officers pretended to work for a charity NGO and extracted information from
Palestinians about themselves and their neighbourhood under the guise of helping them (Tawil-Souri, 2012; Marom, 2018).
10
Besides colonising the economics, politics, and social spheres, technology has become another sphere of colonialism in the Strip,
forcing Gazans to “live under a regime of digital occupation” (Tawil-Souri, 2012, p. 28). According to Mezzadra and Neilson (2019), data
mining is at the heart of digital postcolonialism in today’s terms. This risk of data extraction has been highlighted by the Palestinian
Ministry of Interior, warning Gazans against suspicious communications and the heavy penalties for those who pass information to
Israeli intelligence. Thus, Palestinian people, beneficiaries, and NGO staff have become worried about using technology in their virtual
communications with each other (Abu Eltarabesh, 2018). Hence, due to worries about their safety, beneficiaries are reluctant to be
approached via technology which, thereby, intensified their exclusion from NGOs’ accountability including those who are techno
logically reachable by NGOs. To resist the coloniser’s exploitation of technology and to protect their own safety, beneficiaries
voluntarily choose to be digitally excluded; this form of accountability exclusion posed a challenge for NGOs in reaching out to
beneficiaries.
5.1.3. Digital disempowerment of women beneficiaries

Although digital transformation looks like an abstract process, it entails transforming people, processes, and cultures (Mergel,
Edelmann, & Haug, 2019; Bharania, 2020). Technology is not simply tangible hardware and machines but includes the knowledge of
using technology (Rentschler & Potter, 1996). The complex and unique setting of the study context as one of the most deprived in the
world indicates how certain groups within this community are disempowered by digital postcolonialism and being digitally excluded
from the virtual world. Digital postcolonialism makes technological advancements unattainable for the vast majority of the indigenous
community, thus limiting the number of those who are digitally literate and have digital affordability:
“Technology cannot be an alternative to traditional accountability approaches because our target groups are old and poor. The
technology could be helpful to approach and ensure accountability to young patients who can access technology and have some
familiarity with it” [INGO - Project Coordinator].
Besides digital disempowerment due to economic and knowledge opportunities, our interviewees mentioned several examples
related to female digital disempowerment. They highlighted that virtual contacts through technology-based accountability tools such
as video calls, photographs, recordings, and text messages with female beneficiaries are not welcomed by their families. Risam (2018)
argues that digital postcolonialism creates worrying digital disempowerment and social representations in societies. These repre
sentations became evident in this study where conservative families of many female beneficiaries, who disproportionately bear the
brunt of the digital occupation, rejected their participation in any online communication with NGO employees in general, and male
employees in particular:
“We are having an issue with female orphans in the 15–16 age group or widows living in their husband’s house whose relatives,
e.g., uncles or older brothers, have put additional restrictions on the use of technology and social media to contact others. They
do not allow NGO personnel to visit them in the house nor contact them on the phone. Therefore, we are currently facing
difficulties contacting them” [INGO - CEO 1].
By 2017, in Palestine, only 39.8% of women felt safe online and 42.9% were compelled to online self-censorship (Arab Centre for
Social Media Advancement, 2017). This is not surprising given the overall discourse in the Strip whereby communications are closely
monitored by Israel.15 Our participants mentioned several incidents where female beneficiaries were very suspicious and uncom
fortable about being approached via technology:
“Some beneficiaries refuse to communicate online while others are afraid to do so. One of the female patients said to me that she
needs (mental health therapy) sessions, but she was so scared and kept asking if this would be used against her or if these video
calls would be recorded. Her family does not know that she receives mental health treatment because they reject mental health
therapy and believe that what she is experiencing is witchcraft. I often explained to her that she is entirely safe; however, she
rejected video calls in the end” [PNGO - Mental Health Therapist 1].
The immense fear that any form of online communication with NGOs is monitored via invasive technologies that could be used
against female family members caused them to opt for digital exclusion. Although women are known to be subjected to a wide array of
cyber-crimes such as hacking, blackmailing, hate speech and sextortion, the dramatic rise in cyber-crimes experienced by female
Palestinians in recent years (Association for Progressive Communications, 2018), has amplified their choice for digital
disempowerment.
In an economically deprived society, families tend to prioritise males (seen as breadwinners) over females (seen as carers) to
purchase over-priced technology products such as smartphones in the Gaza Strip (UN Women, 2020). This further exacerbates female
digital exclusion:
“Our biggest challenge is to reach out to female students who are already marginalised and, in most cases, have no mobile
phones to use. We are not able to get in touch with them” [INGO - Education Coordinator].
Accountability to women involves transforming them into active, engaged citizens (Tanima, Brown, & Dillard, 2020). However,
women beneficiaries in Gaza are digitally disempowered by the coloniser’s digital control, causing them to live with constant digital
15
According to Shtaya (2022), “Israeli bugs are implanted in every mobile device imported into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, without the
knowledge or consent of the eventual buyer.”
11
concerns which further impede their inclusivity. Toprak, Banar, and Özkanal (2009) state that the Israeli colonisation of Palestine
strengthened the traditional patriarchal family and limited the choices of women due to security reasons. Women in the Gaza Strip
lived in a “shadow pandemic” under physical and virtual lockdowns with limited assistance from NGOs (UN Women, 2020).
Whilst taking into consideration the concerns of the families of women beneficiaries, NGOs’ practices of accountability need to be
different, flexible, and adaptive in reference to the societal realities (Ebrahim & Weisband, 2007; Schmitz, Raggo, & Bruno-van Vij
feijken, 2012) that shape what NGOs can(not) provide (Chew & Greer, 1997). For instance, dialogue and interaction are essential for
accountability and women’s empowerment (Tanima et al., 2020). However, NGOs working in the Gaza Strip during the lockdown were
significantly unable to reach out to their women beneficiaries as this could either lead to more restrictions being imposed by their
families, or NGOs finding themselves subjected to social scrutiny or rejection.
5.2. Corroborated accountability to funders
During the pandemic, NGOs were unable to fully use technology to demonstrate to their funders how their resources are used to
uplift the living conditions of their vulnerable and marginalised beneficiaries and to justify their conduct (Huang, 2023). Digital
occupation deprived NGOs of an advanced power supply, devices, connectivity, applications, virtual private networks, and
cloud-based software. As highlighted by INGO - Business Development Officer 1, this situation frustrates both NGOs and their donors,
when the promise of accountability is not fulfilled as asserted by O’Leary (2017):
“The lockdown hit us fast. The prolonged blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip made it harder to import IT equipment such as
switch boxes and batteries during the lockdown” [INGO - IT Expert 2].
One interviewee, INGO – Finance Manager, mentioned that although his NGO is international, its office in Gaza is not technolog
ically developed and lacks servers and proper networks. Furthermore, he is the only one responsible for IT-related issues. On the one
hand, this could be justifiable by the nature of NGOs’ activities in which technology projects were outside the scope of their daily
activities. Merkel et al. (2007) comment that NGOs tend to help people rather than invest heavily in technology infrastructure. On the
other hand, these NGOs have suffered the consequences of years of blockade and digital occupation of the Strip including denial of the
free flow of technology products to the Strip, control and monitoring of telecommunication spheres and blocking the access of Gazans
to the virtual world (Bharania, 2020). Most of the NGOs operating in Gaza are funded on a project basis with very little indirect funds
going to build their infrastructure (DeVoir & Tartir, 2009). The Palestinian local community, in return, is incapable of funding NGOs
that entirely depend on funding from international funders and who are challenged by Israel through, for instance, the NGO Monitor16
that, in 2017, managed to shut down the Visa, MasterCard, and American Express online donations to numerous Palestinian NGOs
(NGO Monitor, 2017).
PNGO HR Director and PNGO - IT Expert 1, revealed that funders have become familiar with the context of the lockdown which is
usually the case during military aggression,17 where life pauses. For instance, during the 52 days of Operation Protective Edge against
the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2014, life aspects stopped except for the NGOs that had to work on the ground to provide food and
shelter to internally displaced people (Finkelstein, 2018). Funders, therefore, allowed for flexible accountability requirements during
the aggression in order for NGOs to respond quickly to the needs of their beneficiaries. “The same goes for COVID-19 in which donors
accept a delay in reporting” [INGO – CEO 1]. Likewise, and in response to the challenges faced by NGOs during the pandemic, donors
allowed changes in budgets and allocation of some funds to support beneficiaries’ access to technology:
“Because of COVID-19, we requested approval from donors to increase the budgetary amount for contingencies and unplanned
events. I have to add several contingency budget lines and ask for the donor’s approval … This was all requested online from
donors who conducted a series of online meetings to discuss and approve the changes in the projects’ scope” [INGO - CEO 2].
“Donors were flexible in responding to our requests to delay, change or re-allocate funds. We added screenshots as evidence of
implementation in our reports” [PNGO - Senior Programme Officer].
Funders demanded more downward accountability instead of the overly dominant upward accountability (Rahmani, 2012;
Boomsma & O’Dwyer, 2019) to give NGOs more flexibility in their interactions with beneficiaries, to become more effective, and to see
their money properly utilised (Schmitz et al., 2012). They understood that these NGOs lack the digital capacity to reconcile
accountability concerns to funders and beneficiaries at such a time (Kuruppu & Lodhia, 2019), so they modified their reporting re
quirements and accepted different tools for progress verification suggested by the NGOs (Boomsma & O’Dwyer, 2019):
“We now prepare reports using new tools of verification such as screenshots or photos of us sitting in front of the computer.
Moreover, we share with the donor the link to Zoom meetings. Reports during the pandemic have more photos to tell what
happened with more citations from beneficiaries who cannot meet the funders” [PNGO - Programme Officer 1].
Although the existing accountability mechanisms and tools of verification such as screenshots from virtual meetings, call logs,
16
NGO Monitor is an Israeli research institution established in 2002 to report to international funders about the performance of NGOs working in
Palestine.
17
The Gaza Strip experienced four main lethal attacks: Operation Cast Lead (2007–08), Operation Pillar of Defence (2012), Operation Protective
Edge (2014) and Operation Guardian of the Walls (2021).
12
scanned documents and the numbers of video views18 and downloads are not compelling and effective because they are less dynamic,
cannot cater to individual needs and cannot be reliably measured, they appeared to tick the boxes of upward accountability
requirements:
“Before the pandemic, I had to visit kindergartens and do some recreational activities with kids. During the pandemic, I had to
do this online and share these videos with teachers to display them to students. I cannot report exactly to the donor how students
reacted to the videos and their impact” [PNGO - Mental Health Therapist 2].
Our findings in this theme offer a counterpoint to prior research that donor accountability distorts, marginalises, and shadows
downward accountability to beneficiaries (see e.g., Agyemang et al., 2017; Kuruppu & Lodhia, 2019; O’Dwyer & Unerman, 2008).
They show that COVID-19 has shifted the nature of NGOs’ upward accountability to funders NGOs to become intertwined and mutually
constitutive to beneficiary accountability to help NGOs achieve their goals and remain closer to the community they serve rather than
dominating their processes and practices of accountability. The interviewees elaborated on how often they had to double their efforts
by increasing the number of workshops to manage social distancing with deprived communities or increasing the number of visits
allowing for strict measures. These changes in activities were approved and supported by the funders as COVID-19 altered their
attention towards the living conditions of beneficiaries including coping with technology illiteracy and unaffordability as well as the
impoverished state of the IT infrastructure of both Palestinian and international NGOs caused by the digital occupation. It also drew
our attention towards the necessity for funders to take into account the political, social, and economic conditions of the community
when upward accountability requirements are designed. We found NGOs with established technology infrastructure and staff capacity
were at an advantage over other NGOs in meeting the accountability demand of their funders. However, it remains unclear whether
these practices would become the new normal accountability practices in a post-lockdown era.
5.3. Opportunities for NGO accountability via technology
Technology has taken centre stage in facilitating social change in organisations (Cresswell, Worth, & Sheikh, 2010; Scott &
Orlikowski, 2012). In the case of NGOs, technology has aided them in achieving their mission and identity to shape accountability
towards stakeholders, including local communities (Ganesh, 2003). The novel experience of the COVID-19 pandemic propelled NGOs
toward complete reliance on technology in managing their accountability relations (CHS Alliance, 2020). As a result, NGO staff,
funders, and beneficiaries should be connected via technology to demand and give accounts (Callon, 1991).
Before the pandemic, NGOs enacted accountability practices through face-to-face communication with funders and beneficiaries,
but the pandemic has intensified the use of technology to demonstrate accountability to the funders:
“We have a project called “One to One” whereby one sponsor takes the responsibility of one orphan or more. During Ramadan
(24 April 2020–24 May 2020), the sponsors asked for reports and feedback about the orphans. Therefore, we moved to an online
approach in which the orphan sends us a letter on WhatsApp thanking the sponsor and telling him/her about their life cir
cumstances during Ramadan and COVID-19” [INGO - CEO 1].
Although discharging accountability has been challenging during the pandemic due to technology constraints, our interviewees
were of the view that limited accountability through using technology is better than no accountability. There was concern among
interviewees about the shrinkage in funding for the whole sector, following cuts in the foreign fund budget after COVID-19 (Craig,
2020), which means their upward accountability to funders becomes much more critical in order to secure funds in the coming years:
“I cannot, under any circumstances, reject the external auditors as this would raise doubts among the donors about my NGO’s
credibility. Rejecting an audit would raise lots of questions. I am fine if the auditors are willing to do an audit remotely through
scanned documents. I would invest more in transforming accountability practices to gain the credibility of donors. The
headquarter has informed us that they are experiencing massive shortages in funds due to COVID-19. So, I cannot argue with
any requirement from the donors who have become less in numbers” [INGO - CEO 1].
Hence, upward accountability, by demonstrating how programme activities are being implemented, is key to NGOs securing more
funds (Kilby, 2006), especially following the pandemic. Some upward accountability practices that can save time and money in
competing for funds include conducting the process online, such as remote audits, relying on scanned documents and online meetings
(Abrahamson, 2020).
The use of technology has also helped in identifying new beneficiaries who could otherwise go unnoticed using traditional
accountability mechanisms. Although statistics and facts on the ground indicate that the majority of people in the Gaza Strip cannot
afford technology (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2020), there are still some beneficiaries who can afford and are digitally
literate. The use of technology can prove cheaper for beneficiaries who cannot afford transportation expenses, especially women
beneficiaries who may have to ask for the funds and justify to their families their need to visit an NGO:
“I had a teenage female patient who lives in the North of the Gaza Strip and could not afford transportation expenses to come to
our office. Moreover, her family does not know about her (mental) illness, which led her to consider suicide many times. She
18
We stand critical about these practices: are these numbers correct? If so, does watching a video guarantee that it has met its purpose? How
confident are NGOs and their funders about these practices?
13
contacted me on the free hotline, and I asked her to come to the office. However, I also encouraged her to phone me every day
because of her circumstances, and I provided support online. In the end, I would say that meeting online or on the phone is
better than nothing” [PNGO - Mental Health Therapist 1].
The international and Palestinian NGOs working in the Gaza Strip have discovered technology to be an effective way to
communicate with their beneficiaries through social media and other platforms in discharging their accountability during the
pandemic. Moreover, technology has been found to create better communication channels between NGOs and beneficiaries in col
lecting feedback and understanding the latter’s needs and satisfaction with the services provided to them through the use of platforms
such as WhatsApp groups and Google Meet:
“Technology helped us collect beneficiaries’ feedback by Google Meet. That helped as we can have an endless number of
beneficiaries at once to meet and discuss issues with them. We used paid advertisements to reach out to a wider base of ben
eficiaries” [INGO - Education Coordinator].
“Beneficiaries were given vouchers to purchase items they want from a list of permissible items from designated vendors who
then update their list through the software telling them which items are frequently purchased [INGO - Food Security Officer]
Technology has democratised accountability by being inclusive and giving an equal voice to stakeholders; and beneficiaries can
now virtually meet, discuss, and demand accountability (Neu et al., 2019). This also acts as a reliable source of monitoring and
responding to beneficiaries’ needs and requests. Moreover, the international and Palestinian NGOs working in the Gaza Strip have
found technology to be an effective way to communicate with their beneficiaries on social media and other platforms to discharge their
accountability. The beneficiaries and funders have provided suggestions and shared opinions regarding the quality of different services
received (Yates & Difrancesco, 2022):
“We are currently renewing the project in which we learnt from the pandemic that online platforms and mobile applications
could be used to raise awareness” [INGO - Project Coordinator].
In short, technology has helped NGOs communicate missions, reach out to new beneficiaries, and advertise services (Merkel et al.,
2007). Furthermore, it has also enabled stakeholders to participate in issues beyond NGO accountability to overall social account
ability through limitless social media platforms (Neu et al., 2019). These opportunities could be intensified in different contexts where
beneficiaries have greater access to technology that enables rather than constrains them.
6. Conclusion
Technology is a useful tool in helping NGOs fulfil the complex demands of accountability. The COVID-19 pandemic and the total
lockdown that hit almost every country in the world was an unprecedented phenomenon that saw an upsurge in the use of technology
as people found themselves needing to adjust their communication and interactions with others to contain health and safety risks. This
also applies in the case of NGOs in fulfilling their upward and downward accountability during a major disruptive event such as the
pandemic.
While prior studies suggest that NGOs have been able to adopt technology to continue their mission during the time of crisis (see e.
g., Cheng et al., 2015; Ronfeldt et al., 1998; Turkay & Turkay, 2019) we have established, in this paper, that the extent of success is
dependent on the technological infrastructure in a particular setting or context. In answering the call by Cordery et al. (2020), we
studied the enactment of NGO accountability in a colonised context using the Gaza Strip to showcase the struggles under digital
postcolonialism, an additional and powerful mechanism of control to entrench Israel’s colonialism.
We contribute to the literature on digital postcolonialism (Couldry & Mejias, 2019; Noble, 2018; Ponzanesi, 2020) and post
colonialism (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; McLeod, 2020) by informing how the adoption of digital postcolonialism as a theoretical
perspective is able to deconstruct manifestations of virtual colonialism. In the case of the Gaza Strip, this new form of colonialism is
manifested by depriving Gazans of gaining access to technological products through economic means such as making them expensive
and unaffordable to the majority and blocking them from the virtual world. In this way, they remain isolated from the rest of the world
through social means by creating fear and remaining digitally illiterate. Furthermore, exercising stringent control through political
means by blocking the Palestinian state from having any control over its electromagnetic field for security purposes avoids resistance
actions. Such a powerful exercise of control has implications for NGOs operating in Gaza in building an advanced technological
infrastructure to organise their activities and, hence, accountability practices.
Our study further contributes to both streams of literature on NGO downward accountability (Uddin & Belal, 2019; Yates &
Difrancesco, 2022) and accountability during crises (Baker, 2014; Huang, 2023; Perkiss & Moerman, 2020; Sian & Smyth, 2022; Yu,
2021) by revealing the reasons for the lack of accountability between NGOs and certain disadvantaged groups in society. Concerning
the accountability of NGOs towards their beneficiaries, the study exposed three cautionary tales. First, the digital occupation and
blockade dropped the most disadvantaged people, particularly the poor and old, off the radar of downward accountability as a result of
digital unaffordability and digital illiteracy. Instead of serving the poorest and most vulnerable groups, NGOs had to change their
selection criteria to those accessible via digital tools. The pandemic has also created one of the greatest divides in modern society
between those with digital affordability and literacy and those without. Second, techno-colonialism by digital natives on digital
savages has caused apprehension about the safety of the technology when assessing and discharging accountability towards benefi
ciaries. Technology imported from the West is often perceived with mistrust by both NGOs and their beneficiaries. This risk is more
apparent in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli Intelligence uses technology to collect information about Palestinians under the guise of
14
NGOs, thereby causing resistance to any form of digital communication between NGOs and their beneficiaries for fear of share
veillance. Third, digital safety concerns that proliferated amongst families of female beneficiaries regarding them being approached
via digital-based accountability practices, such as videos and online chats, have exacerbated digital disempowerment among Gazan
women which has left them under virtual and physical lockdowns.
We also contribute to the stream of literature on NGO accountability and technology (Delfino & Van Der Kolk, 2021; Kuruppu et al.,
2022) and NGO upward accountability (Boomsma & O’Dwyer, 2019; Cavicchi & Vagnoni, 2022) by revealing why upward
accountability during times of crises using technology-based practices enables success as a result of funders being more flexible
concerning their accountability requirements. The flexibility in accountability requirements granted to NGOs by funders may be
attributed to two reasons. First, funders were aware of the situation in the Gaza Strip which has proved to be challenging for NGOs even
before the pandemic. The experience of isolation and restrictions is not new to NGOs in the Gaza Strip as they have encountered four
periods of fatal aggression in 2008–07, 2012, 2014, and 2021 causing several NGOs to halt or suspend their operations. Second,
funders realised the adverse impact of digital postcolonialism on NGOs and their beneficiaries alike where any upgrade of IT infra
structure is beyond funders’ control. However, the study stands critical about the efficacy and sustainability of the alternative upward
accountability measures such as video views, scanned documents, and screenshots adopted by NGOs as they do not genuinely measure
the impact of the NGOs’ activities.
Despite the challenges associated with technology in the Gaza Strip, our analysis revealed a promising tale of how technology aided
NGOs in maintaining their accountability networks and provided alternative platforms of communication and feedback. Moreover, it
managed to reach new beneficiaries who could not have been included under the traditional accountability mechanisms. However, the
current progress suffices as a short-term solution. Major transformation to digital-based accountability requires an overall trans
formation of the economic, political, and cultural realities of the society.
This study is not without limitations. Firstly, we only considered the role of technology in upward and downward accountability.
This could include but is not limited to, the role of technology in the transformation of traditional towards virtual accountability
practices and the role of big data and artificial intelligence in the enactment of accountability practices. Moreover, future research may
address the role of technology in the enactment of personal accountability within NGOs. Secondly, due to movement restrictions, we
only managed to conduct telephone interviews with NGOs and may have missed the enriched data that face-to-face interviews could
have provided. Thirdly, although the Gaza Strip is a unique context that cannot be generalised, our exploration of the role of NGOs in
the context of digital postcolonialism should evoke an agenda for further research in the Global South. Such research is currently
absent but can be further developed and expanded in the newly emerging research linking postcolonialism to NGO accountability in
the post-COVID-19 era.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

The British Accounting Review

Digital postcolonialism and NGO accountability during COVID-19:

2. Digital postcolonialism and NGO accountability in a time of crisis

2.1. Overview of prior research on NGO accountability

2.2. NGO accountability during the pandemic

2.3. Technology and NGO accountability

3. Reproducing postcolonial relationships through technology

4.1. Study context

4.2. Research sample

4.3. Conducting and analysing semi-structured interviews

5.1. Maneuvered accountability to marginalised beneficiaries

5.1.1. Digital occupation, unaffordability, and illiteracy

5.1.2. Techno-colonialism and voluntary digital resistance

5.1.3. Digital disempowerment of women beneficiaries

5.2. Corroborated accountability to funders

5.3. Opportunities for NGO accountability via technology

Data will be made available on request.

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