Public Agenda (Accra)
Amos Safo
22 August 2008
opinion
Ghana is due to host the 3rd Aid Effectiveness Forum from September 2-4. This is one of the high level conferences to be held here in Accra mainly due to Ghana's resurgence, not only as the political voice of Africa, but also the economic voice.
The Accra conference comes against the backdrop of growing concern over the ability of developing countries, most of them from Africa, to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs are the world's agreed goals to cut poverty, hunger, and disease. Established in 2000, the targets were to be met by 2015. We are now at the halfway point. This makes a strong case for developed countries to increase aid to poor countries. But at what cost and to what effect? So far, despite endless words about increasing aid to poor countries, the rich G-8 countries are reneging on their part of the bargain. The use of development aid as a political stick merely deepens the suffering of impoverished and unstable countries, without producing the economic objectives sought by beneficiary countries.
The G-8 and other developed countries are now faced with the consequences of seeing the MDGs and other develop goals remain mere dreams after years of interventions to reverse poverty and disease. The legitimate question that flowed from the inability of governments and donors to apply aid effectively is what went wrong? The international aid effectiveness movement began taking shape in the late 1990s. Donors and aid agencies, in particular, began to realize the costs they imposed on aid recipients by their many different approaches and requirements. They began working with each other, and with partner countries, to harmonize these approaches and requirements. This led to what is now commonly called the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.
The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness expresses the international community's consensus on the direction for reforming aid delivery and management to achieve improved effectiveness and results.
The declaration is grounded on five mutually reinforcing principles:
· Ownership: Partner countries exercise effective leadership over their development policies and strategies, and coordinate development actions.
· Alignment: Donors base their overall support on partner countries' national development strategies, institutions, and procedures.
· Harmonization: Donors' actions are more harmonized, transparent, and collectively effective.
· Managing for results: Managing resources and improving decision making for development results.
· Mutual accountability: Donors and partners are accountable for development results.
Commitments. The Paris Declaration contains 56 partnership commitments to improve the quality of aid. For example, under ownership, partner countries commit to exercise leadership in developing and implementing their national development strategies, and donors commit to respect partner countries' leadership and help strengthen their capacity to exercise it.
Indicators and Targets. The Paris Declaration also sets out 12 indicators to provide a measurable and evidence-based way to track progress, and sets targets for 11 of the indicators for the year 2010.
After the high level forum in Paris, ministers of developed and developing countries met at another High-Level Forum on Harmonisation in Rome (February 2003) to reaffirm the commitments to harmonise and align aid delivery. "We are encouraged that many donors and partner countries are making aid effectiveness a high priority, and we reaffirm our commitment to accelerate progress in implementation, especially in the following areas" :
i. Strengthening partner countries' national development strategies and associated operational frameworks (e.g., planning, budget, and performance assessment frameworks).
ii. Increasing alignment of aid with partner countries' priorities, systems and procedures and helping to strengthen their capacities.
iii. Enhancing donors' and partner countries' respective accountability to their citizens and parliaments for their development policies, strategies and performance.
iv. Eliminating duplication of efforts and rationalising donor activities to make them as cost-effective as possible.
v. Reforming and simplifying donor policies and procedures to encourage collaborative behaviour and progressive alignment with partner countries' priorities, systems and procedures.
vi. Defining measures and standards of performance and accountability of partner country systems in public financial management, procurement, fiduciary safeguards and environmental assessments, in line with broadly accepted good practices and their quick and widespread application.
The leaders also committed themselves to taking concrete and effective action to address the remaining challenges, including:
i. Weaknesses in partner countries' institutional capacities to develop and implement results-driven national development strategies.
ii. Failure to provide more predictable and multi-year commitments on aid flows to committed partner countries.
iii. Insufficient delegation of authority to donors' field staff, and inadequate attention to incentives for effective development partnerships between donors and partner countries.
iv. Insufficient integration of global programmes and initiatives into partner countries' broader development agendas, including in critical areas such as HIV/AIDS.
v. Corruption and lack of transparency, which erode public support, impede effective resource mobilisation and allocation and divert resources away from activities that are vital for poverty reduction and sustainable economic development. Where corruption exists, it inhibits donors from relying on partner country systems.
Besides, they acknowledged that enhancing the effectiveness of aid is feasible and necessary across all aid modalities. In determining the most effective modalities of aid delivery, they undertook to be guided by e guided by development strategies and priorities established by partner countries, combining efforts to maximise their combined effectiveness.
What was even crucial was the declaration of the ministers to intensify their efforts to provide and use development assistance, including the increased flows in ways that rationalise the often excessive fragmentation of donor activities at the country and sector levels. The Accra conference is therefore expected to put meat to the harmonization policy agreed in Rome in 2003.
Ministers of developing and donor countries responsible for promoting development and Heads of multilateral and bilateral development institutions who will convene in Accra will have another opportunity to reassure their constituents that they are still committed to eradicating poverty and promoting peace and prosperity by building stronger, more effective partnerships that enable developing countries to realise their development goals.
They will also need to recommit themselves to achieve much more if all countries are to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Achieving the MDGs however, requires functioning democracies to foster social progress.
Addressing inequalities of income and opportunity within countries and between states is essential to global progress and cannot be glossed over. Key on the agenda will be issues of gender equality, respect for human rights, and environmental sustainability, which are cornerstones for improving the potential of poor women, men, and children.
As stated earlier on, the Accra meeting will have to focus keenly on three major challenges in order to accelerate progress on aid effectiveness:
1. Country ownership is key. Developing country governments will take stronger leadership of their own development policies, and engage with their parliaments and citizens in shaping them. Donors will support them by respecting country priorities, investing in their human resources and institutions, making greater use of their systems to deliver aid, and increasing the predictability of aid flows.
2. Building more effective and inclusive partnerships. In recent years, more development actors-middle-income countries, global funds, the private sector, civil society organisations-are increasing their contributions and are bringing valuable experience to the table. This also creates management and co-ordination challenges. Together, all development actors will work in more inclusive partnerships so that all our efforts have greater impact on reducing poverty.
3. Achieving development results-and openly accounting for them-must be at the heart of all we do. More than ever, citizens and taxpayers of all countries expect to see the tangible results of development efforts. We will demonstrate that
Despite the seeming delays in reversing most poverty indicators, it must be emphasized that there has been progress somewhere along the line. Fifteen years ago, one in every three people lived on less than one dollar a day; today, that figure has been reduced to one in five. However, more than one billion people still live in extreme poverty,-most of them women and girls-and access to safe drinking water and healthcare remain major issues in many parts of the world. In addition, new global challenges-rising food and fuel prices and climate change-threaten the advances against poverty many countries have made. These indicators make the Accra meeting more crucial and all eyes will be on Ghana in September.
The renowned Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, President of the Earth Institute, argues that despite the numerous global challenges pinning down Africa's progress, Africa is indeed savable. And this can be done through increased trade. He argues that Africa is economically isolated, owing to very poor infrastructure, large over-land distances, and many landlocked countries. These geographical barriers keep much of Africa, especially rural Africa, out of the mainstream of international trade. Without the benefits of trade, much of rural Africa struggles at subsistence levels and may never break free from poverty. In view of this African development ministers must be pushing for a bigger slice of the international market.
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