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This is the World Bank's blog on governance and anti-corruption. It aims at providing a space for debate and knowledge sharing on this critical field of development. | Learn more...

Mark's blog

What transpired at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra?

Submitted by Mark on Fri, 2008-09-05 13:10

The 1700 people who came to Accra for the big aid effectiveness conference this week are packing their bags, but the agreement they managed to cobble together here looks to leave a lasting impact.

More than 100 ministers were on hand here for what many called a watershed.  As I noted in an earlier posting, the Accra conference was preceded by a major conference of civil society organizations (CSOs).  Then starting on Tuesday at the official conference, 82 CSOs were given seats and played a major role in the proceedings.  That CSO presence, combined with a strong push from some of the official delegations here, produced an agreement that goes much further than ever before towards transparency, civil society engagement, and fostering stronger developing country leadership in the $100 billion-a-year international aid business.

Aid effectiveness without better governance and capacity development? Don't bet on it!

Submitted by Mark on Tue, 2008-09-02 08:23

I'm sitting in the audience at the "CSO Parallel Forum on Aid Effectiveness" in Accra, Ghana, listening to speaker after speaker read a list of demands that ought to come without saying.

CSOs are civil society organizations, and this is a very engaged group of activists, more than 500 strong, who came here to offer their opinions and inputs before the big official "High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness" that starts here on Tuesday.  At that time, more than 100 ministers and a total delegation of more than 1200 people are expected to descend on this pleasant capital in West Africa to take stock of the $100-billion-a-year international development aid business.

GAC Country Diagnostics: a tool for partner countries serious about tackling the challenge of corruption

Submitted by Mark on Fri, 2008-08-01 17:34
When Pierre Nkurunziza came to power as president of Burundi in late 2005, he pledged to take serious action to address his country’s poor record on governance.  Burundi had considerable problems with official and petty corruption, and he asked the World Bank Institute (WBI) for support in developing an action plan for tackling these challenges.

 

Starting last year, WBI, working in partnership with the World Bank country team and the Government of Belgium, assisted Burundi in carrying out its first nationwide governance and anti-corruption (GAC) diagnostic survey.  Applying the same methodology that it has used in more than two dozen other countries, WBI helped Burundi create a multi-stakeholder steering group of government and civil society members. This group’s aim was to initiate and lead a process of identifying Burundi’s specific governance problems and designing an approach to address them.