Whither EC Aid?

The Commission calls on donor and developing countries to use development aid more effectively. At the eve of the High Level Ministerial Meeting in Accra/Ghana (2 – 4 September), the Commission urges governments to commit themselves to concrete and ambitious actions. Three years after the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, some progress have been made. Yet much more needs to be done to reach the UN Millennium Development Goals in 2015.
Louis Michel, Commissioner responsible for Development and Humanitarian Aid, said: “It is now or never. The Accra meeting must provide the necessary wakeup call to both donors and developing countries. Since Paris, in way, the most easier parts of the Paris Agenda have been implemented. Yet, much more is still ahead of us. Now the challenge is to ensure this rhetoric is translated into practice on a wide scale.”
At the international aid conference, the EU proposes that action should focus on four different areas:
• Division of Labour: Donors should work together, coordinate their programmes, set a joint agenda and decide together. In this way, we will avoid that a multitude of donors are active in one sector or country, while others are neglected. Similarly, the situation of aid “orphans” where countries are forgotten about in favour of aid “darlings” where donors are queuing up must be rectified. Improved division of labour will also simplify administration for developing countries – as they normally have to comply to many different donor procedures.
• Predictability of aid: To help developing countries planning their own development strategies, donors should also plan their aid flows for a period of at least three years. If they are to carry out important infrastructure projects or structural reform processes they need to be able to rely; to secure a big infrastructure or reform process.
• Country systems: Rather than imposing on developing countries projects and development strategies, donors should help governments to develop their own priorities. This could be done e.g. by contributing financially to the national budget.
• Going for results: Rather than imposing many different conditions before granting the aid, donors should focus on the results to be agreed with the partner countries.

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New evidence from the OECD shows that donors in particular are not meeting their side of the bargain. Negotiations have stalled as some donor governments, particularly Japan and the United States, are refusing to agree real actions to meet the commitments.
“If developing country concerns are not genuinely addressed, then donors are paying little more than lip-service to the promises of partnership,” says Yao Graham of Third World Network Africa, “Once again we see global power relations being reinforced and the demands of civil society and developing country governments sidelined.”
All governments present in Accra accept that developing countries need to determine their own priorities if aid is to work. But the proposals made by developing country governments to reform aid are being ignored in last minute closed-door negotiations.
Developing countries have set out their key priorities where they want to see real action.
• Removing harmful policy conditionality that undermines democratic processes
• Ensuring aid doesn’t bypass domestic processes and scrutiny
• Making aid much more predictable over the medium term so that they can plan effectively
• Untying all aid from the purchase of rich country goods and services, including food aid and technical assistance.

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Africa should “take the driver’s seat” to ensure it reaps full benefit of aid flows from the rich world, including increasing funds from powerful economic players like China, a World Bank vice-president said on Monday.
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.
“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.
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.
At the same time, anti-corruption campaigners like Berlin-based Transparency International said there was still a lack of sufficient local oversight and accountability in recipient countries to prevent theft or waste of aid funds.“
“We need to see greater local ownership of aid programmes, a clear voice for civil society in the process and an end to purely donor-driven aid policies,” he added.
While most donors and recipients agree that progress has been made since the 2005 Paris meeting to improve aid use, they say more must be done to better harmonise programmes, ensure the participation of receiving governments and guarantee that funds go to those who really need them.

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Accra is an opportunity to advance towards a broader agenda of development effectiveness. The High Level Forum in Accra will be followed by major United Nations meetings in New York and Doha that will confirm the huge gap between what has been promised and the lack of progress in the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals.
We call on officials present in Accra to respond with urgency. What we need in Accra are clear time-bound commitments to deliver real results for people on the ground, towards the eradication of poverty, inequality and social exclusion. This is a political not a technical challenge, and should be treated as such.
What is our ‘bottom line’ for Accra?
So far, the Paris process looks like a failure. The 2008 Paris Survey shows that donors in particular have a long way to go in delivering what they pledged. Accra must deliver a major change in implementation and change how “effectiveness” is measured by setting new targets and indicators. All donors must set out detailed plans and individual targets showing how they will meet their commitments.
But the Accra High Level Forum must also deliver real measurable and time-bound commitments to address some of the problems which are not adequately dealt with in the Paris Declaration. Donors must take responsibility for improvements which only they can deliver (e.g. untying aid and improving medium-term predictability of aid) and all governments must increase the democratic accountability and transparency of their use of aid resources, policies and activities. If the Accra High Level Forum is to be seen as a credible response to the serious challenges of making aid more effective, the Accra Agenda for Action must at a minimum:
• Commit to broadening the definition of ownership so that citizens, civil society organisations and elected officials are central to the aid process at all levels.
• Set time-bound and monitorable targets to:
o Stop short-term aid and commit to ensuring that 80% of aid is committed for at least 3-5 years by 2010.
o Reduce the burden of conditionality by 2010 so that aid agreements are based on mutually agreed objectives.
• Set a more ambitious target to make all technical assistance demand-led by 2010.
• Commit to end tied aid, including food aid and technical assistance, by 2010.
• Commit donors and recipients to make the aid system more accountable by developing and implementing new standards for transparency by 2009 which ensure that accurate, timely, accessible and comparable information about aid is proactively communicated to the public.
• Commit to improve the monitoring of aid effectiveness by adapting existing Paris indicators and by integrating new indicators from the Accra Agenda for Action by 2009; by supporting independent and citizen-led monitoring and evaluation systems and by agreeing an inclusive evaluation process to assess the impact of Paris on poverty reduction, gender equality, human rights and environmental sustainability.

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Over 170 women forum Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas attended the Women’s Rights Global Consultation on Aid Effectiveness and Gender Equality on August 30, 2008, in Accra Ghana. The consultation created space for women to input into the CSO parallel forum held on August 31-Septemebr, 1, 2008 and the High Level Forum 3 on Aid Effectiveness. The consultation builds on many initiatives of women’s rights organisations and networks that have mobilised women to reflect and share strategies and experiences on how women can engage effectively, both technically and politically with the aid effectiveness agenda and processes at all levels.
The women pointed out that the current treating gender equality as a cross-cutting issue marginalises it as a crucial development and aid effectiveness issue. The women reiterated that there can be no aid effectiveness without a strong commitment to women’s rights and gender equality in the Accra Agenda for Action. Unless gender equality becomes a fundamental political commitment and viewed as a central goal for the development agenda, we cannot expect aid or development policies to deliver the required results.
Specifically, the women suggested Alternative Indicators for Monitoring Progress towards National Development Goals including Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment developed by UNIFEM. They include:
Ownership:
1.1 Countries evaluated in 2010 have institutional structures in place which allow for systematic participation of civil society and women’s groups in national development planning (including PRSP formulation), implementation and monitoring.
• 1.2 National development strategies and PRSPs developed up to 2010 integrate a gendered analysis of poverty consistently supported by sex disaggregated data, and reference to national commitments to international conventions such as CEDAW and the Beijing Platform for Action.
• 1.3 National gender equality priorities/plans are costed, supported by an action plan and integrated into the national development strategies and PRSPs.
Alignment & Harmonization
• 2.1 Donor and partner countries evaluated in 2010 have gender responsive budgeting systems in place at national and local levels.
• 2.2 Percentage of donor funds dedicated to capacity building on mainstreaming gender perspectives in public finances for Finance Ministry officials,. Line Ministries, Civil society (and in particular women’s organizations) and Parliamentarians.
• 2.3 Percentage of public/donor funding for meeting women’s specific needs for example, violence against women and HIV/AIDs.
Managing for Results & Mutual Accountability
• 3.1 The 2010 evaluation of implementation of the Paris Declaration principles include systematic involvement from civil society and women’s organizations.
• 3.2 At least three gender-sensitive indicators are assessed during formal aid effectiveness monitoring and evaluation processes.
• 3.3 Performance assessment frameworks of donors include gender equality as a key result and include systematic involvement from civil society and women’s organizations.
• 3.4 Percentage of aid dedicated for harmonized systems for joint government/donor capacity building on mainstreaming gender equality in programme-based approaches in place at country level.

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