Accra: Improve Aid Quality

Through more than 22,000 letters to development ministers, ONE members demonstrated significant public support for increasing aid effectiveness, an issue long considered of interest only to aid experts.

Negotiations were tense in Accra, but the final Accra Agenda for Action reflected much of what ONE members asked, including:

• Predictability: Donors have agreed to provide regular and timely information on 3-5 year expenditure and implementation plans that developing countries can integrate in their medium term planning and macroeconomic frameworks.

• Use of Country Systems: Donors have made specific commitments to use developing countries' own systems for delivering aid.  Donors have also agreed to align their monitoring of aid flows and results with country information systems to make it much easier to compare and evaluate results.

• Aid transparency: Donors have agreed to make aid more transparent, reinforced by the launch of the International Aid Transparency Initiative.

Increasing transparency doesn't have the same tangible result as simply increasing development assistance, so it can be more difficult to sell to results-driven politicians. However, increasing aid effectiveness is crucial to making sure that when we do give aid, it effectively achieves its intended purpose.