The largest NGO of the world, Brac, however, will not transfer any money from Bangladesh earned from the Brac's commercial enterprises in the country, rather it aims to raise funds from the developed North American and European countries for the African nations.

"Our vision is to establish Brac as an international development organisation with a distinct identity as a south Asian NGO with its headquarters in Dhaka," founder and Chairperson of Brac Fazle Hasan Abed said at a press conference at Brac Inn Centre in the city yesterday.

The NGO, which has major programmes in micro credit, primary education, health and small enterprises in the country, has already launched its operations in Tanzania and Uganda and plans are afoot to expand to Kenya, Southern Sudan and Malawi soon, he said.

Brac will introduce its unique integrated development approach for poverty reduction in these countries by incorporating health, water and sanitation components along with micro credit schemes, he added.

It targets to open up 25 branch offices in Tanzania and Uganda by early 2007 and reach over 25,000 beneficiaries by June 2007.

The rationale for going to Africa is that, it poses the greatest development challenges of the 21st century with very little infrastructure, economic activity, education and healthcare, Abed said, adding that the donor agencies and the African governments also had been asking Brac for operating in Africa.

"We have more chance of success as we the people of the developing countries understand our problems better than the NGOs from the developed countries," he said.

Already registered in the UK, the NGO will also enlist itself in the USA first and then in Belgium, Canada and some other developed countries for fundraising, Abed said.

Making a comparison among the international NGOs, he said although there are some 100 million beneficiaries of Brac, it raised funds from only one country, while other international NGOs like ActionAid, CARE, Oxfam or World Vision have many member countries for fundraising.

Abed said that to make its programmes in Africa self-sustainable, the NGO will establish business enterprises there, similar to those in Bangladesh.

Afghanistan has already approved a licence for establishing a Brac Afghanistan Bank to help strengthen the financial sector in Afghanistan, he said adding that although some Bangladeshi staff will be employed initially for overseas Brac programmes, gradually the locals will be given the leadership in running them.

On the interest rate for the micro credit programme in the African countries, he said it would be more than that of Bangladesh, as density of population in some of those countries is thin.

Responding to a question, Abed said, "Bad politics and corruption are the top setbacks for the development of Bangladesh. The country could have done much better if it could solve the problems of the politics."

Brac's deputy executive directors Aminul Alam, Dr Moshtaq Ahmed and Manzur Hazan and director of research and evaluation Dr Imran Matin were also present.