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international aid

Aid Effectiveness beyond Accra: good governance & anticorruption 2010

Submitted by Kaufmann on Wed, 2008-09-10 09:01

Evidently it was Huge, and very ‘High Level’ -- the Forum on Aid Effectiveness which just ended in Accra, with 1,700 attendees.  I wasn’t one of them. But I read and talk to people. The sense is that at the end of the day some promising steps may have taken place.  Mark Nelson was there, blogging already about the Parallel Forum with civil society, and the main declaration points of the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA), which was improved at the 11th hour.

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.