Proceedings of the Accra High Level Forum .1 Forum roundtables

The Accra event (2–4 September 2008) attracted more than 1,700 participants, representing 120 developing and more-developed countries and scores of agencies, global funds, foundations as well as 80 civil society organisations. The two quotations above, from leaders’ remarks at the Forum, sent two clear messages: the pace of progress since Paris had been unacceptably slow, and it was urgent to do better to help those for whom all these meetings and pledges had been made – that is, the poor.

The bulk of the discussions took place at a series of nine roundtables, each focussing on a priority theme / issue. Five of these roundtables (OECD WP-EFF, 2008c) have been chosen to gives a sense of the lively debate and conclusions reached.

 Roundtable 1 on Ownership addressed two questions: Whose ownership? Whose leadership? Discussions reaffirmed the importance of a broader definition of ownership, committing governments to engage with parliaments, local authorities and civil society. This called for a review of monitoring mechanisms on ownership and stressed the importance of CD for all development actors, using lessons learnt through South-South cooperation and based on the Bonn Consensus on capacity-building. There was also a need to revisit the indicator for country ownership or to complement it to reflect the broader definition.

 Roundtable 4 on Managing for Development Results (MfDR) addressed public sector management issues. MfDR was considered to be at the core of public-sector reforms, and it was necessary to broaden

the coverage of “results” to include implementation of human rights, gender equality and environmental protection. The process of change underlying this shift had to be supported by political leadership. It also required champions and incentives to promote a “results culture”, adopting new performance measurement tools. This implied that under-performance would be uncovered and dealt with under a transparent accountability mechanism. To establish a “results culture”, capacity development in MfDR not only has to apply to government but also to parliamentarians, civil society, the private sector and the media. In this context, harmonisation of aid providers’ support and strengthening of South-South learning mechanisms stand out as important drivers.

 Roundtable 5 on Mutual Accountability witnessed lively discussions involving parliamentarians and civil society representatives. Mutual accountability was a crucial means of supporting behaviour change, together with the need to strengthen both country-level and international accountability and enhance partner countries’ roles. It also called on development partners to respect domestic accountability.

The role of parliaments proved to be the weakest link in existing practices. It needed to be strengthened and supported by upgrading access to information and its quality. “The best mutual accountability mechanisms and development results come from those countries with the strongest domestic accountability mechanisms” (OECD WP-EFF, 2008c).

 Roundtable 7 on situations of Fragility and Conflict built on the results of an earlier meeting in Kinshasa, which reached agreement between partner countries and development partners on priority actions in these situations. Actions that were considered priority included: monitoring the implementation of Good International Engagement Principles in Fragile States; addressing peace-building and state-building priorities;

and improving the delivery of international assistance to reduce fragility and conflict. An ad hoc group was to be set up to consider how to improve funding policies and mechanisms to speed up recovery in these situations. A key message was that “in order to make progress – and to demonstrate progress – work is needed on the preconditions for achieving the MDGs by addressing state-building and peace-building needs” (ibid.).

 Roundtable 9 on the changing Aid Architecture placed particular emphasis on how countries can manage all aid within a harmonised framework and procedures in order to attain maximum development results, and addressed the consequences of increased aid sources and delivery modalities. Although this diversity was welcome, aid fragmentation had become an urgent issue requiring aid to be aligned to country priorities while using local coordinating mechanisms.

Partner countries pushed for speedier reform to improve responsiveness, speed, predictability and transparency; to respect Paris Principles and adapt them to local contexts; and to engage in more inclusive dialogues with development partners, internationally and locally. They called for better local coordination of all assistance under their leadership, which required more transparency of information on all flows of assistance, from government and non-government sources.

Interactions between participants were candid and specific, with partner countries forcefully arguing their case for speedier reform measures by aid providers, and the latter responding either by demanding more transparency and better country systems or simply acknowledging that both sides had to do better. The roundtable format could not have produced the vivid dialogue had it not been for a more vocal performance by partner countries, which evidently did much preparatory homework.

Supplementing the roundtables was the ministerial debate. Rather than make the usual conventional statements – non-specific and of little value in getting things done – ministers identified three major challenges facing efforts to improve aid effectiveness:

 strengthening country ownership through: broadening country-level policy dialogue on development; strengthening developing countries’

capacity to lead and manage development; and strengthening and using developing-country systems to the maximum extent possible;

 building more effective and inclusive partnerships through: reducing costly fragmentation of aid; increasing aid’s value for money;

welcoming and working with all development partners; deepening engagement with CSOs; and adapting aid policies for countries in fragility situations;

 achieving development results and openly accounting for them through: focussing on delivering results; being more accountable and

transparent to our publics for results; continuing to change the nature of conditionality to support ownership; and increasing the medium-term predictability of aid.

They agreed on the following directions to guide future actions and meet the three challenges they identified:

 reforming aid systems was urgent to meet changing global challenges;

 improvement must be based on understanding that political constraints should not be an excuse; it demands strong political ownership, not merely technical solutions;

 aid volume and aid effectiveness were closely linked, and the shortfall in meeting ODA commitments had to be addressed;

 aid systems suffered from many shortcomings, which required joint actions by both sides;

 aid fragmentation had become more serious due to the rise in the number of aid sources and delivery modalities, which raised transaction costs;

 changes in behaviour had become a central task in order to deal with the above challenges; some of these were deeply entrenched and required interventions by top political leaders;

 strengthening capacity was recognised as a high priority, not only at the technical levels, but also to enhance leadership and democratic accountability;

 South-South and triangular cooperation were not adequately recognised for their potential; middle-income countries urged that such potential be more actively explored;

 greater aid transparency was needed to facilitate aid management and benefit from good practices learnt.

Each of these recommendations required not only top leadership approval and commitment but continued engagement to steer the change process.

This was really the acid test whether public statements at these high-level meetings had the “shelf life” necessary to bring about desired change and resilience to overcome resistance. They later confirmed these directions as being essential during a BBC World Debate on “Africa and its partners:

What works”. Wherever I was invited to speak about the factors that really make a difference in improving aid effectiveness, including Working Party sessions, I stressed that leadership commitments alone do not suffice, arguing that there was plenty of evidence to support my argument. It was continued commitment and follow-up actions that make the difference.

This remains my strong view to today.

Accra organisers introduced an innovation in the form of a “marketplace of ideas”. This was a facility to go beyond technical discussions, allowing sponsors to showcase initiatives illustrating how they were implementing aid effectiveness measures (World Bank, 2008a). More than 50 posters were presented by partner countries, more than 30 by development partners, and 30 by NGOs, advocacy groups and networks. These posters highlighted that: (a) the diversity of experiences required more flexibility in applying Paris Principles to suit national contexts; and (b) weak national capacities hindered progress, caused deficits in performance data and slowed progress in aid harmonisation and alignment.

Civil society: The CSOs’ first serious participation in the aid debates occurred during the Paris Forum. Since then, they have organised themselves to mount a Parallel Conference on Aid Effectiveness in Accra, which attracted the largest concentration of CSO representatives to discuss aid issues. More than 600 representatives from 325 CSOs and 88 countries took part. Those attending the parallel meeting voiced their concerns about the PD and reservations about the expected Accra statement (Dake, 2008).

The Paris Declaration and proposed Accra Agenda were criticised in many respects, with CSOs arguing that:

 the HLF3 should move beyond aid effectiveness to development effectiveness;

 democratic ownership should be ensured, based on beneficiaries’

actual needs;

 harmonisation with government priorities was incompatible with civil society due to the diversity of its roles, and applying Paris Principles reduced CSOs to the role of aid providers only;

 human rights, a rights-based approach, gender equality and environmental sustainability should be added as essential topics in the dialogue, in addition to trade, debt and resource mobilisation issues.

They complained about several issues: the problems of engagement they were facing as development advocacy groups, caused by restrictive government policies; parliaments and the media were facing similar issues aggravated by lack of transparency; reporting by some aid providers was misleading; use of country systems had not improved, despite reforms by partner countries; and no real progress had been made on tied aid and technical assistance. In addition, aid providers failed to address conflict within as well as across borders in fragile states; and more actions were required to: empower women and civil society with skills for conflict prevention, remove administrative rigidity in aid delivery, and apply human rights and humanitarian law frameworks as important agenda items.

CSOs advocated: a country-level tripartite monitoring mechanism involv-ing aid providers, government and civil society; improved transparency;

shifting aid management to a more inclusive institution; improving governance of global funds; and greater control by Southern governments in managing aid.

These messages were highlighted by the convenor of the Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana, Rose Mensah-Kutin, who called for

“addressing unprecedented combination of natural, political, economic and social crises that increase poverty” and for “understanding the political context and unequal power relationships within the aid architecture”. She added that “the sum of our message is very clear: change has to happen to ensure that issues of poverty eradication, gender equality, human rights, disability and environmental sustainability are the real pillars of development effectiveness” (Mensah-Kutin, 2008).

Brian Tomlinson (2008) felt that CSOs had made progress by: advancing the HLF3 discourse towards development effectiveness; underlining the failure of the Paris Declaration to deliver “even modest reform”; helping developing countries strengthen the language on mutual accountability, use of country systems and SSC; and broadening country ownership to stress democratic ownership and the role of CSOs as development actors.

The extent to which these claims could be attributed exclusively to CSOs is a matter of judgement; however, it would be inaccurate to ignore the effect of the stronger voice of developing countries, which was on a hitherto unprecedented scale, which called for “actionable ideas” to

improve CSO effectiveness (OECD WP-EFF, 2008c, p. 15) as well as recognising the need to strengthen the capacity of local CSOs, enhancing their accountability mechanisms, and defining the principles and guidance for their own behaviours and effectiveness as development actors. Having said that, there is no doubt that CSOs contributed to a more lively aid debate, extending its scope beyond recipients and providers and challenging both sides to look beyond the Paris Agenda.