Public Agenda (Accra)
Amos Safo
29 August 2008
Two days from today (September 1-3), top government officials from 100 countries will convene in Accra to kick off the Third High Level Aid Effectiveness Forum with the hope to consolidate the Paris Declaration. Its organizers and participants are also hoping that the forum will transform the aid process for the better.
One critic has argued that the Aid industry has no intention of changing its game, and its worst critics are in actual fact its best friends. Several other critics say they are only anticipating nothing short of Civil Society Organisations having the platform to bash donors.
Far from being a conference for bashing donors, the Accra forum will undoubtedly create the platform for people's voices to be heard. To start with, the development ministers and their partners will use the forum to demonstrate how transparency and accountability are essential elements for achieving development results which lies at the heart of the Paris Declaration.
Under the declaration, the partners agreed that countries and donors would become more accountable to each other and to their citizens for the use of all development resources and the results achieved. In Accra, the partners will pledge to pursue transparency and accountability by taking the following actions: (a) to make aid more transparent through the facilitation of parliamentary oversight in public financial management, including public disclosure of revenues, budgets, expenditures, procurement, and audits. Under the transparency scheme donors will publicly disclose regular, detailed and timely information on all their aid flows to enable more accurate budget, accounting, and audit by developing countries and , (b) They will promise to step up efforts to ensure that-as agreed in the Paris Declaration-mutual assessment reviews are in place by 2010 in all countries that have endorsed the Paris Declaration.
Ghana has already carved a niche by organizing public hearings of the Public Accounts Committee, which reviews the annuals accounts of government Ministries, Departments and Agencies. These accounts are usually prepared by the Auditor General's Department and must be critically examined and approved by parliament as required by the Constitution.
All said, one of the main events of the Forum on Aid Effectiveness will be the Marketplace of Ideas. The Marketplace will give participating countries and organizations an opportunity to highlight their success in implementing the goals of the Paris Declaration. Through posters displayed at the Marketplace and presentations, delegations will illustrate their innovative approaches and best practice examples in aid effectiveness.
The Marketplace of Ideas will take place at the Accra International Conference Center (AICC) and will be visible throughout the course of the Accra HLF. Within the marketplace setting there will be a "speaker's corner" where scheduled oral presentations of posters will be made.
A similar marketplace event was held at the Hanoi Third International Roundtable for Managing for Development Results (February 2007). Ghana will definitely be one of the success stories to be told at the market place of ideas and it is expected that both government and CSOs will speak with one voice to push the country's development agenda forward. It has cautioned that failure to do so would result in slow progress in eradicating poverty and hunger, reducing maternal and child mortality and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
At a forum last week ahead of the Forum, the CSOs argued that poverty can only be reduced significantly only when government integrates gender equality in programmes with clear indicators and implementation dates and through the use of protection instruments to promote environmental protection.
The CSOs underscored the fact that Aid has not made much impact because it is still prevalent in the old political economy; governments and donors are not accountable to citizens, much as development policies are not entirely country owned and country-led.
Like government, the CSOs will be advocating a new Aid effectiveness model aimed at reducing poverty. The United Nations Development Fund for Women UNIFEM has been at the forefront of promoting increased investment in gender equality as a catalyst to translate aid effectiveness into development effectiveness. UNIFEM cautioned that failure to do so would result in slow progress in eradicating poverty and hunger, reducing maternal and child mortality and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
The partners will therefore be calling on governments to introduce additional mechanisms to enable citizens to hold public officials accountable for the use of public funds, engage in a more rigorous fight against corruption and create equal space for civil society participation in policy making, implementation, monitoring and evaluation; the very issues the ministers and donors will be discussing under the Accra Agenda for Action.
It is heartening that the ministers and representatives of donors have promised they would deepen their engagement with civil society organisations as independent development actors in their own right whose efforts complement those of governments and the private sector. "We share an interest in ensuring that CSO contributions to development reach with their full potential. To this end: a) We invite CSOs to reflect on how they can apply the Paris principles of aid effectiveness from a CSO perspective. (b) We welcome the CSOs' proposal to engage with them in a CSO-led multistakeholder process to promote CSO development effectiveness."
The spotlight will certainly be on Ghana for three reasons. Firstly Ghana is noted for having a vibrant civil society (comparable to any western country) whose input into government policy has been outstanding. Secondly, Ghana's current dispensation has made it possible for civil society participation in the governance process and lastly Ghana has successfully held four consecutive multi-party elections without blood letting; and the outcome of the 2008 election will determine whether Ghana will remain and will remain intact to continue to support underlying principles of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), such as good governance and the process of peer review.
No doubt, the country is considered an 'island of peace' in the West Africa Sub-Region and its recent democratisation process has offered opportunities for freedom of expression.
It is generally agreed among development partners that Ghana, considered as the former beacon of hope is one of the few sub-Saharan countries with the potential to move from lower to middle-income country status in the foreseeable future.
According to the World Bank, Ghanahas made steady progress in tackling poverty over the past few years. Income poverty declined from 42% in 1997 to 35% in 2003.
The Ghanaian Government receives most of its foreign aid through multi-donor budget support, or MDBS. It's a mechanism used by donor countries to pool funding which is then spent directly by the Ghanaian government on health, education, infrastructure and more.
For example, spending on poverty reduction increased by 73% from 2002 to 2004, according to the World Bank. In 2005, the Government of Ghana announced a policy to make basic education in all public schools free and it is expected that the Gross Primary School enrolment which has increased from 83.8% in 2002 to 86.3% in 2004 will further increase. Arguably, social investments in education, health, water and basic infrastructure have made a positive impact on the lives of the vulnerable.
However, progress on other development indicators has been slower. Under five mortality rose from 100/1000 in 2002 to 111/1000 in 2004. Maternal mortality stood at 215/100,000 in 2002, though there has been a remarkable turnaround these past few years, due to the introduction of the NHIS and recently, the free maternal health care. Improving health delivery, especially maternal health care is an area Ghana will be seeking more funding to tackle.
Overall, this is a forum that will determine the future of developing countries, in as much as it would chart a new path for Aid effectiveness. The Economists Intelligence Unit 2008 report on Ghana points out that the country's political scene will continue to be dominated by the forthcoming presidential and legislative elections in December 2008 to the neglect of pertinent developmental issues that need urgent attention.
Whichever government will emerge in 2009 will determine whether Ghana will maintain good relations with her major trading partners and donors, especially the US and the UK, which have traditionally been the closest because of their large
New government
It is therefore expected that the new government will focus on delivering results as contained in the Paris Declaration. The new government should in line with the Paris Declaration improve 'management for results', by taking the following actions: (a) strengthening the quality of policy design, implementation, and assessment through improving information systems, including (disaggregating data by sex, region, and socioeconomic status).( b) The new government and its partners should work to develop cost-effective results management instruments to assess and adjust the impact of development policies. (c) Our government should work towards ensuring that donors align their monitoring with country information systems. Donors should support, and invest in strengthening, Ghana's statistical capacity and information systems, including those for managing aid.
It behooves on Ghana's donors to pay more attention to delegating sufficient authority to our economic managers to deliver results in line with aid effectiveness principles. Only then will Ghana really emerge as the beacon of hope for Ghanaians and Africans.
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