A new agenda for Accra .1 Priority actions

As a result of the agreement, consensus was reached within the Consensus Group (see Box 4); the key agenda items for Accra were as follows:

Box 4: Priority actions proposed as key agenda items for Accra

 Strengthening country ownership

 Building local capacity to make effective country-ownership possible

 Strengthening country systems

 Increase medium-term predictability of aid

13 An example of the difficulties encountered during negotiating sessions was the lack of consistency between some conclusions reported in session draft summaries and the recollections of PCCG members (plus a few other members), who insisted on appropriately revising the record before resuming negotiations.

 Improving allocation of aid among, and within, developing countries

 Increasing aid’s value for money by untying it

 Promoting good governance

 Strengthening mechanisms for accountability

 Managing for development results

 Adapting aid policies in fragile states

 Establishing incentives for aid effectiveness Source: Author

More than 100 partner countries were expected to participate – in addition to development agencies and CSOs – totalling more than 800–1,000 participants. HLF3 was to be launched a few months prior to the Doha Financing for Development conference, which provided an opportunity to publicise the outcome of the Accra Forum at that conference.

The Forum was structured around three components / objectives: to report on progress in implementing Paris commitments; to discuss in-depth issues to accelerate future progress and address emerging issues; and to specify what was then called a “small set of concrete actions” for endorsement. Nine roundtables constituted the core of the Forum, generating lively and open debates. Three concluding sessions were set aside for the ministerial dialogue. Running parallel to the three-day sessions were the Market Place exhibits of approximately 250 posters explaining the “what and how” of initiatives taken by sponsoring stakeholders. The next chapter gives a brief account of the outcome of these debates.

Ghana had been chosen in response to its offer to host the event and also because it presented a good example of a partner country that took concrete measures to “put its house in order” and showed promising results in improved aid effectiveness. This choice was also a response to calls for holding the Forum in a developing country, away from Paris (and other Western capitals).

4.5.2 Some early reactions

The posting of AAA drafts on the OECD website – and the issuance of the Phase I Synthesis Report on Evaluation of the Implementation of the Paris Declaration (Wood, Kabell, Muwanga, & Sagasti, 2008) – triggered a number of responses. The Synthesis Report stressed that the “Paris Declaration is a political agenda for action, not just a technical agreement. In the difficult processes required for implementation, real issues of power and political economy come into play, in many cases requiring political solutions”.

The following are samples of early reactions.

 A North-South Institute Note (Brown & Morton, 2008) reviewed progress in light of the survey findings and made policy recommendations for the Accra HLF: adapt more forcefully to the

“new reality” of the increasing role of new actors and explore ways to engage with them; take actions to reform the aid architecture in light of the increasing complexity brought about by increasing the number of actors and different aid modalities; achieve a more representative, inclusive and equitable aid architecture; develop new ways of addressing domestic pressures for accountability and obtaining results;

take more note of gender and civil society issues and place less emphasis on the visibility of their own efforts and use of tied aid; and consider the broad range of development finance issues beyond aid.

 The South Centre (South Centre, 2008) was critical of the structure of the draft and the process adopted. It questioned: the assumption that the PD provided the best framework for improving aid effectiveness;

the continued focus on conditionality-based aid delivery, pointing to the imbalance in the commitments of partner countries and development partners; the lack of attention to how partner countries can be enabled to develop national capacities and a viable aid-dependence exit strategy; and the absence of suggestions for changing the lopsided governance structure, which was donor-driven.

The Centre argued that developing countries did not have adequate representation on the Steering Committee; the consultation process did not allow state-to-state negotiations and used regional consultation meetings instead; and the zero draft was prepared with other WP-EFF

members who were invited only to provide written comments. The drafting process “was undertaken using exclusionary, closed-group, and non-participatory modalities”.

 The ODI gave a generally positive reaction, commenting that the draft was more specific and inclusive of issues not covered in the PD, such as the references to gender and human rights as well as effective and inclusive partnerships. But it cautioned that implementation was likely to be slow unless there was a strong political will and commitment, and it questioned the extent to which this would realistically happen, since the aid agenda did not command sufficiently high political priority in many aid-providing countries, adding that “the politics of aid effectiveness should not be underestimated … since implementation of commitments will likely require unpopular actions to be taken”

(Wathne, 2008).

An earlier ODI briefing paper made similar assessments and argued that, although the Paris / Accra Agenda was not radical enough, it was

“conducive to exaggerated responses and undue political correctness”.

It urged development partners to “micro-manage less and engage more with policy debates and institutional factors underlying the deficit in country ownership”. The paper argued that political leaders on both sides should stop blaming incentives of a political nature and start acting to change them (ODI, 2008).

 Homi Kharas of Brookings (Kharas, 2008) was not optimistic about the prospects that the AAA would lead to any significant changes, maintaining that bolder measures were required, yet faster progress was, in his view, unlikely “because of lack of political will and leadership in some of the largest donors”. The absence of the United States as a chair or co-chair in any of the nine roundtables suggested that its attention was focussed on bilateral cooperation, with low priority being given to issues of harmonisation and coordination with others.

The gist of these commentaries on the eve of the HLF3 gave the feeling that not much could be expected from the Accra meetings, despite recognising that the AAA was more specific and more inclusive than in previous HLFs. There was a strong consensus that unless political will and

commitment could be mobilised on a far wider scale at Accra than before, it was likely in the end to be “business as usual”.

My own assessment was that these pessimistic reactions were not without justification. The record of performance in implementing Paris was lacklustre, if not unacceptably modest, considering all the deliberations and pledges made. But to place the blame fully at the doorstep of political will would be unwarranted and would ignore the many other obstacles hampering progress. These rested on both sides of the aid equation, though not at all in equal measures. Many partner countries had been suffering from weak national development capacities beyond the much talked about use of country systems. This is an issue that receives more attention in a later chapter.

My view has been that weak capacities, which have been badly defined for a long time, were – and continued to be – one of the most chronic and difficult challenges that had yet to be given the technical and political attention they deserved. Nevertheless, having been active in the “kitchen”

that produced the Accra draft menu, I believed it was the most realistic as well as necessary agenda, which was ripe for open discussion in Accra.

For this reason – and considering the evolving setting in which aid effectiveness issues had to be reviewed – I found no reason to join the pessimists’ camp.

On the eve of the Accra Forum, the key question was whether imple-mentation of the AAA, once approved, would prove the pessimists wrong.

Let us review how that event addressed the issues at hand.