Aid Effectiveness Conference Ends
After three days of intense negotiations, Ministers of developing and donor countries responsible for promoting development, and heads of multilateral and bilateral development institutions yesterday agreed to reform the way aid is offered and spent.
This was contained in the Accra Agenda for Action endorsed by all the stakeholders to accelerate and deepen the implementation of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. Developing countries, by this agreement, have committed themselves to taking control of their own future, while donors should coordinate better amongst themselves. Both parties have pledged to account to each other and their citizens.
Participants at the forum used as a baseline, development goals set out in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness for their discussions on the need to make aid more effective, based on consultations with more than 80 developing countries, donors of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and a number of civil society organizations worldwide.
Evidence from a survey of 54 developing countries provided factual basis for the discussions. Evaluations of how 8 recipients from 11 donor countries implemented the Paris Declaration after signing it also learnt critical evidence of where action is required.
The key areas agreed under the Accra Agenda for Action included predictability, where donors will provide a 3-5 year forward information on their planned aid to partner countries, country systems, under which partner country system would be used to deliver aid as the first option, rather than donor system.
According to a communiqué issued at the end of the meeting conditionality, which is also a key point, will switch from reliance on prescriptive conditions about how and when aid money is spent to conditions based on developing country's own development objective. The Agenda also considered untying, where donors will relax restrictions that prevented developing countries from buying goods and services from who and where they could get best quality at the lowest price.
Agenda stated that all stakeholders should commit themselves to the eradication of poverty and promote peace and prosperity by building stronger and more effective partnerships that will enable developing countries realise their development goals.
For all countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), stakeholders have to work much more, since democracy, economic growth, social progress and care for the environment are the prime engines of development in all countries, the commuque stated.
'Gender equality, respect for human rights and environmental sustainability are cornerstones for achieving enduring impacts on the lives and potential of poor women, men and children. It is therefore vital that all their policies address issues in a more systematic and coherent way', they stated.
The declaration further affirmed that progress is being made in achieving aid effectiveness, but there is the need to improve on it. It added that learning from their past successes and failures in development cooperation and building on the 2003 Rome Declaration on harmonization, it has became imperative to hold each other accountable for achieving concrete development results.
According to the declaration, evidence shows that three major challenges need to be addressed to accelerate progress on Aid Effectiveness. There are country ownership, building more effective and inclusive partnerships as well as achieving development results and openly accounting for them..