Donors, recipients discuss aid effectiveness (Mirror, Page 39)

By Lucy Adoma Yeboah (Saturday, September 6, 2008)
THE Government of Ghana this week hosted the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra where about 1,200 participants from all the six continents of the world attended.
Dubbed “Accra HLF-3”, the forum, which was the third of its kind, took stock of, and reviewed progress made in implementing the 2005 Paris Declaration commitments, identified remaining bottlenecks and challenges and also determined the key actions both donors and recipient countries need to accelerate progress in making aid more effective.
The Accra forum which came three-and-a-half years after the March 2005 declaration in Paris, France to make aid work, therefore culminated in a Ministerial Session, in which ministers and heads of agencies endorsed what was termed the “Accra Agenda for Action” to accelerate efforts at making aid more effective.
Among the dignitaries who attended the conference were the President of Liberia, Dr (Mrs) Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and that of Honduras, Mr Manuel Zelaya Rosales, as well as more than 100 ministers of finance and about 200 top officials from bilateral and multilateral organisations such as the World Bank, the Arab Bank for Economic Development, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, the Council for European Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, the Global Fund, the OPEC Fund for International Development, and the Economic Commission for Africa, among others.
Other participants include heads of donor agencies, government organisations, international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other civil society groups.
Some of the topics discussed included: “Progress since the Paris Meeting and Aid and Development Effectiveness beyond Accra; Aid Effectiveness and Development Results: What Needs to Change and How can the International Aid System Deliver? Climate Change Adaptation and Aid Effectiveness; The Role of Statistics in Aid Effectiveness and Regional Centres for Evaluation Capacity Development”.
There were also nine roundtable discussions, which were chaired by highly competent individuals on the international scene, as well as side events organised by civil society groups from all over the world on some of the issues confronting developing countries.
Opening the well-attended programme in Accra on Tuesday, September 2, 2008, the Chief Advisor to the President, Mrs Mary Chinery-Hesse, said the developed world would have to deliver on its promise and redouble its efforts if the 2010 target of making aid work better for developing countries was to be achieved.
“There is a lot of room for improvement. There is much more to do. We have to admit that the pace of progress made since 2005 is too slow,” the presidential advisor stated, and called for greater effort by both donors and recipients of aid to reduce lack of co-ordination, which hinders effectiveness.”
She said although there was some amount of change in managing assistance globally, there was still a lot of room for improvement.
"From where we sit in Africa, we can reasonably assert that we see change. There is progress in some respects,” she pointed out.
Each year, donors world-wide — countries, international agencies and specialised funds — provide nearly $120 billion in development and humanitarian aid to developing countries, with private contributions adding a further $20 to 25 billion.
Africa received a total of $5.7 billion in aid last year as official development assistance from the bank alone, which is expected to grow to $7.2 billion this year for different menu of programmes including health, infrastructure, education, capacity building and public sector reforms.
Mrs Chinery-Hesse declared: "There is the need to move forward with a new sense of urgency. We must not merely talk about things, we must act."
Touching on lessons gleaned from the evaluation of the Paris Declaration, which exposed the challenges imposed by fragmentation and weak co-ordination, she said there was the need for all stakeholders to remind themselves of the commitment made in Paris in 2005 — what has become known as the Paris Declaration where donors and recipients of aid pledged to use aid resources effectively, sparing no effort to accelerate growth and achieve better development outcomes, especially to reduce poverty for the millions of people around the world.
The Executive Director of the United Nations International Children’s and Education Fund (UNICEF), Ms Ann Veneman, who presented a paper on behalf of the UN Development Group, urged all partners to accelerate progress on the five principles of the Paris Declaration.
She said moving at a faster pace was more critical in the light of the global economic challenges brought about as a result of rising cost of food and fuel, and climate change, saying the UNDG, which unites 28 UN funds, programmes, agencies and its partners, “would deliver more effective support to developing countries”.
“Development finance often remains unpredictable, conditional and tied when it should be aligned to countries’ priorities and systems. The Accra High Level Forum must address these challenges beyond the commitments made in the Paris Declaration by articulating actions to which all parties can be held accountable,” she stressed.
Speaking on progress made since the Paris Declaration, the Chairman of the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness, Mr Jan Cedergren, said for aid to work effectively, partners should change deep-seated behaviours and reform, adding that at the country level, political will and unity were essential to aid effectiveness.
The Korean Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Mr Oh Joon, represented the perspective of a non-Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donor and said as a recipient of aid and now a donor, Korea had realised the need to emphasise ownership of aid projects.
This means countries should be allowed to choose which programmes are of priority to them and what form of aid they want.