Deliver On Promise • Chinery-Hesse Urges Donors

The Chief Advisor to the President, Mrs Mary Chinery-Hesse, has charged the developed world to deliver on its promise to redouble efforts to meet the 2010 target to make aid work better for developing countries.

Opening the well-attended Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra yesterday, Mrs 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.

More than 1,200 representatives of governments of aid receiving countries, donor institutions, parliamentarians and civil society organisations are presently gathered in Accra for the conference on improving the quality and impact of development assistance.

Each year, donors worldwide — 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.

The meeting in Accra, coming three-and-a-half years after the March 2005 declaration in Paris, France to make aid work, will therefore, culminate in a Ministerial Session, in which Ministers and heads of agencies are expected to endorse the Accra Agenda for Action to accelerate efforts at making aid more effective.

Mrs Chenery-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.

For that reason, there was the need to take stock of progress made so far in terms of the five principles of ownership; alignment and harmonisation; managing for development results; mutual accountability, monitoring and evaluation systems.

She also talked about the need for donors to support beneficiary countries in the area of capacity building if they must succeed, adding that "development partners should in turn commit to give the necessary support and leadership".

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.

Ms Veneman said aid should serve as a catalyst to help countries to attain nationally and internationally agreed development objectives such as the Millennium Development Goals, adding that aid should reach and help the impoverished and marginalised — the people who need it most.

She said although the current aid environment offered new opportunities, there was the need to revisit existing delivery frameworks that would ensure mutual accountability at country, regional and global levels.

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, saying that at the country level political will and unity was essential to aid effectiveness.

The Korean Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Mr Oh Joon, gave a 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 they want them to be.

Story by Lucy Adoma Yeboah & Samuel Doe Ablordeppey