Last-ditch diplomacy yields better aid agenda at Accra summit: But 'Agenda for Action' still needs action, says Oxfam

from the Statesman Online

by Suleiman Mustapha

Last-minute negotiations pushed by developing country and European ministers at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness have secured commitments to improve international aid.

The world will now be watching to ensure all donors implement the 'Accra Agenda for Action' and go further to make aid more responsive to the priorities of developing countries, said international agency Oxfam.

"The stage is set for important improvements in the way aid is delivered. But the Accra Agenda needs to be backed by urgent action if it is to live up to its name. It won't have any impact on the lives of people living in poverty unless its promise is put into practice,” said Oxfam International head of delegation Robert Fox.

“This agreement must be a floor, not a ceiling. We encourage all donors to go further in accelerating the pace of reform. Oxfam knows that when aid is delivered well, it brings real results for women and men living in poverty. If governments north and south match their words with action, we could see real progress in tackling poverty.” said Robert Fox.

The Accra accord calls for donors to make longer-term aid commitments and sets a new target for donors to deliver aid through developing countries’ own systems. This will be a challenge for donors, said Oxfam, citing a recent survey showing only 46% of aid went through recipient country systems. It also includes measures to make aid more accountable.

“We are pleased to see a stronger commitment to transparency, showing what donors fund and how recipients spend,” said Robert Fox. “And we welcome the recognition that citizens and their organizations have a vital role in defining development priorities and holding governments to account.”

A compromise agreement was reached among official negotiators on Wednesday, without any time-bound targets. But developing country and European ministers arriving in the Ghanaian capital last night argued for specific commitments and dates for action.

Developing countries and non-governmental organisations have pointed to the urgent need to reform aid to prevent waste and give developing countries more control. Uganda, for instance, had to deal with 684 different aid agreements, from 40 different donors between 2004 and 2007.

“There is much more that can and must be done to improve quality, but equally important we need to boost the quantity of aid if we are going to end poverty and improve access to health care, education and clean water,” said Robert Fox.

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Donors And The Poor Agree Aid Agenda

from IPS

This is how the conference in Ghana on international aid effectiveness was resolved. - Kale

By Francis Kokutse and IPS correspondents

ACCRA - Delegates from both developing and developed countries have adopted the Accra Agenda For Action (AAA) as a guide to improve the way aid is given and spent.

The document was adopted at the close of a three-day High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness which drew over 1,200 delegates from about 120 to the Ghanaian capital.

Under the AAA, developing countries committed to control their own futures, and donors to better policy and delivery coordination among themselves.

After some hard negotiations, both sides also pledge to make themselves accountable to each other and their citizens.

Although there were reports that the talks pitted developing countries, backed by the European Union, against leading donor nations the US and Japan, a senior U.S. spokesman played down the suggestion.

"A number of groups were very involved in the discussions and in putting forward inputs and ideas. Everyone was pitching in and working together," said Henrietta H. Fore, Director of Foreign Assistance in the State Department and USAID Administrator.

"We wanted to reflect the urgency, but we also wanted to be realistic. We wanted to set targets that we could meet," she told IPS.

Other US officials pointed to what they called "cultural differences" between the U.S. and Europe -- where European countries tended to set "aspiration targets" by setting the bar high, the U.S. favoured realistic, achievable targets.

"The U.S. is very target-oriented, very results-oriented," said a U.S. official attached to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the grouping of the worlds leading donors that had called the Forum along with the World Bank.

The Accra Agenda states that governments in the developing world will take stronger leadership of their own development polices and engage with their parliaments and citizens in shaping those policies.

"Donors will support them by respecting countries priorities, investing in their human resources and institutions, making greater use of their systems to deliver aid, and increasing the predictability of aid flaws," it adds.

In addition, they agreed that "achieving development results and openly accounting for them must be at the heart of we do."

Since citizens and taxpayers of all countries expect to see the tangible results of developments, the gathered leaders promised to "demonstrate that our actions translate into positive impacts on peoples lives."

"We will be accountable to each other and to our respective parliaments and governing bodies for these outcomes."

"Without addressing these obstacles to faster progress, we will fall short of our commitments and miss opportunities to improve the livelihoods of the most vulnerable people in the world," they added.

The Agenda also agreed to deepen engagement with civil society organisations as independent development actors in their own right, as organisations whose efforts complement those of governments and the private sector.

Civil groups present at the Forum however criticized the final outcome saying it was a weak agreement characterised more by words than action.

"Even last-minute efforts by developing country ministers and their allies only ensured some marginal improvements. This aid forum was organised by the OECD, a rich-country donor club," said Rose Mensah-Kutin, executive director of NETRIGHT Ghana.

"In a year when more than one hundred million people have been pushed into poverty by rising food prices, it is scandalous that donor governments have refused to remove damaging restrictions that increase the cost of food aid," she added.


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Africa urged to take lead in managing aid inflows

from Reuters Africa

More from the conference on aid effectiveness in Ghana. The World Bank took the podium yesterday, and asked for African states to take a more active role in receiving aid. - your editor

By Kwasi Kpodo

ACCRA - Speaking ahead of an international conference on aid effectiveness in Ghana, the bank's Vice-President for Africa, Obiageli Ezekwesili, said countries that receive aid must improve their capacity to use it efficiently and transparently.

The September 2-4 conference in Accra, which will bring together more than 100 donor and recipient states, aims to achieve more effective use of the more than $100 billion in development aid that is channelled to countries every year. More than $30 billion of this goes to Africa, the poorest continent.

"It is not the amount of money that matters, it is the impact ... output and outcome have become central," Ezekwesili said in an Africa-wide video news conference broadcast from the Ghanaian capital.

She said African governments should take responsibility for maintaining control over, and making the best use of, aid and investment flows pouring in from more developed partners, which now included fast-growing economies like China and India.

"(Recipient) countries should be in the driver's seat to set the agenda, deal with the kind of support they want," she said.

The World Bank official said African states could use to their advantage China's aggressive trade and aid offensive on the continent, which has seen Beijing pump billions of dollars into projects from infrastructure to oil.

While many African leaders praise China's "no strings" approach to aid and investment, critics say it undercuts Western attempts to fight corruption and improve accountability and transparency in aid and development projects.

Ezekwesili said it was up to the international community, through institutions like the World Bank, to help African states improve their negotiating capacity and safeguards to obtain the best possible benefits from aid, wherever it came from.

"Africa is the best player to determine in a lot of ways the nature of the engagement that it wants with the providers of finance," she said.

CORRUPTION RISK

Three years ago in Paris, a previous international meeting of aid donors and recipients agreed on the principle that developing countries should have more control over the kind and use of the aid that they received.

This week's Accra meeting aims to strengthen this principle, but British aid charity Oxfam accused some major donors, such as the United States and Japan, of "dragging their feet".

"This isn't just a food fight between bureaucrats. Until you solve the political question of who should shape development, you cannot solve the problems of poverty and inequality," Oxfam delegation head Robert Fox said.

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Less talk, more action, Ghana aid conference told

from Reuters

It seems like we always hear these kind of speeches at the beginning of these conferences. Here is a report of the start of the latest international aid conference. - Kale

By Kwasi Kpodo

ACCRA (Reuters) - Translating billions of dollars of foreign aid into concrete, timely action that helps the world's poorest is the biggest challenge facing both donor and recipient countries, speakers at an aid conference said on Tuesday.

Ministers and officials from more than 100 countries that give and receive aid, along with leaders of humanitarian, lending and relief agencies, opened a three-day conference in Ghana aimed at improving the delivery of development assistance

Critics say that the effectiveness of more than $100 billion of international aid that is channeled to the developing world each year if often undermined and obstructed by bureaucratic bottlenecks, delays, overlapping and political interests.

Concerns about corruption and the squandering of aid funds, especially in weak states in Africa, have also triggered debate about how much donor governments should try to maintain control and oversight over their aid programs. Recipient countries insist the aid must follow their own development strategies.

Opening speakers at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra warned the clock was ticking on efforts to improve aid delivery to achieve ambitious Millennium Development Goals that aim to halve global poverty by 2015.

"There is the need to move forward with a sense of urgency. We must not merely talk about things. We must act," said Mary Chinery-Hesse, the senior Ghanaian presidential adviser who opened the conference on behalf of President John Kufuor.

Speaking for United Nations agencies, the head of the U.N. childrens' agency UNICEF also urged donor and recipient states and their development partners to work in harmony to ensure aid is timely and has a real impact on those who need it most.

"We need concrete objectives and timings to deliver better results," UNICEF executive director Ann Veneman said.

Veneman said there had been definite advances in the battle against global poverty, for example in reducing child mortality around the world or in fighting measles and malaria in Africa.

But more needed to be done to make aid more efficient at a time when the world's poor were struggling to cope with soaring prices for fuel and food. Conflicts and the spread of HIV/AIDS were also obstacles to development.

FOCUS ON POOR

The Accra conference was due to review progress made in applying broad aid delivery principles agreed at a previous meeting held in Paris in 2005.

The so-called Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness called on aid recipient countries to lead their own foreign-supported development, while urging donors to tailor aid to the policies of receiving countries in a more harmonized way. Goals were also set for concentrating on results and mutual accountability.

"We are not going to achieve what we said in 2005. The question is what are we going to do to deliver more effectiveness to take people out of poverty," Paul O'Brien, Director of Aid Effectiveness for Oxfam America, told Reuters.

"There's no point having high rhetoric that raises expectations for the poor but doesn't deliver meaningful results," O'Brien, who is a member of Oxfam International's delegation at the Accra conference, added.

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