Strategic Partnerships, Transparency and Accountability, and Efficiency of International Non-Governmental Organisations in Kenya: Partnerships for the Goals (SDG 17)

International non-governmental organisations in Kenya operate under donor dependence and regulatory scrutiny, and strategic partnerships are widely promoted as a route to efficiency, yet the role of transparency and accountability in this relationship is unclear, a question central to Sustainable Development Goal 17 on partnerships for the goals and to SDG 16 on accountable institutions. The study examines whether strategic partnerships are associated with organizational efficiency among international NGOs operating in Kenya and whether transparency and accountability strengthen that association. The study employs a structured narrative synthesis of 22 peer-reviewed, institutional and regulatory sources, organised around Stakeholder Theory, Resource Dependence Theory and accountability-mechanism scholarship, with findings coded by accountability mechanism and by upward or downward direction. The results show that a survey of 296 Nairobi NGOs found shared vision, teamwork, open communication, trust and joint investment positively correlated with performance, that accountability practice in the wider literature is weighted toward upward donor reporting, and that regulator data indicate more than 14,000 registered NGOs in 2025, of which about 4,000, roughly 29%, were fully compliant with reporting requirements, while the regulator recommends that 70% of funds go to implementation and 30% to administration, a benchmark that measures allocation rather than results. The findings of this study suggest that partnership quality is positively associated with performance on all five dimensions examined, that transparency and accountability are plausibly complementary but are tested as a moderator in none of the 22 sources, and that beneficiary-facing accountability does not follow automatically from partnership quality. JEL Classification Codes: L31; M14; O19.