Improved local capacity needed for aid to work

Participants at a roundtable meeting held last week in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, stressed the need for steps to improve countries' capacity to use development aid effectively, UNDP said in a news release.

The 50 high-ranking government officials, donors and development practitioners who attended the meeting considered measures, including the sharing of knowledge, advice and expertise, donor and recipient governments needed to take to foster technical cooperation for capacity development, according to the release, issued on Thursday.

Ghanaian President John Kufuor, who hosted the roundtable, called for "a new paradigm of technical cooperation," highlighting that developing countries now have many skilled personnel. As a result of information technology, he added, foreign experts were not always needed. Developing countries have expressed growing concern that technical cooperation is not always timely and not always appropriate, often embodying the expertise of the donor countries and reflecting their priorities rather than those of the recipient countries, UNDP reported.

Development assistance needed to respond to clearly articulated national strategies, according to UNDP administrator Mark Malloch Brown, who convened the meeting with Eveline Herfkens, Minister for Development of The Netherlands. Attention is now focused on "ownership and involving the beneficiaries at all levels so that they can be in the driver's seat," Brown added. In her opening statement, Herfkens said that building capacity meant a departure from the traditional approach of "transferring" knowledge from the North to the South and transformation needed to be rooted in indigenous knowledge and capacities.

The 11-12 February roundtable, whose theme was 'GHANA: Improved local capacity needed for aid to work' was part of a UNDP initiative on reforming technical cooperation for capacity development, launched in 2001 with funding from The Netherlands.