NN42, June 2009
A Safari Towards Aid Effectiveness?
The impact of the Accra Agenda for Action on the Donors in Ghana
By Artemy Izmestiev, UNDP, Ghana
Email: Artemy.Izmestiev@undp.orgKeywords
Ghana
As host of the 2008 High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, Accra?s name has become linked to the aid effectiveness agenda and commitments made by donors (bilateral and multilateral) and partner countries in this respect. Development partners in Ghana recognize the important inputs made by the Government for the HLF successful outcome. Ambitious and ?partnership? action-oriented document negotiated in Accra puts to test development partners in their ability to deliver on the promises and partner country to ensure better, more accountable and transparent management of aid to development.
Development effectiveness lies at the heart of the AAA. Capacity development is the key tool to strengthen country systems, implementation capacities, monitoring capabilities. The Accra Agenda for Action strongly highlighted robust capacity as a determining factor for successful development process. Even though ?capacity? was given significant attention in development cooperation in Ghana in recent years, neither the government nor development partners seem to be satisfied with the outcomes. Conceptual disagreements or practical differences lead to un-coordinated actions, which make it difficult to support country?s capacity meaningfully. Development partners in Ghana jointly decided to prepare to be able to handle this issue in a more comprehensive manner. To do so, it was decided to fill in information and analysis gap on capacity development issues. It was necessary to understand what different partners were doing in this area, assemble the relevant bibliography, analyze the political economy determinants of capacity in the national context and draw the useful lessons from the international experience.
Another area of focus became the quality of dialogue between the government and its development partners. In 2007 development partners prepared the Ghana Joint Assistance Strategy aiming at better alignment of aid to the government priorities and improved delivery mechanisms, focusing on harmonization, increased predictability and reliance on the programme-based approaches. This year development partners started the review of the Strategy to analyze the ways in which it can gain traction in the government and serve as an instrument of dialogue.
Furthermore, the Accra Agenda for Action served as an inspiration and gave impetus for the government?s own development policy, establishing a more rational and rigorous format of donor-government interactions. The development of the policy allows strategic consideration of the role that aid should play as the country is moving towards achieving its objective of middle-income status.
As the global development finances experience turbulence, it is natural that the scepticism about aid becomes widespread. No wonder, more developing countries now give preference to the ?exit row?. It leaves extra space in policy negotiations and encourages the government apparatus to prepare for the times when the significance of aid will diminish.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of his organization, the UNDP.
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