By
Godfred A. Polkuu, GNA
Bolgatanga, Sept 21, GNA – Mr. Yaw
Osafo-Maafo, the Senior Minister, has said the drive to move the country beyond
aid does not mean Ghana would be refusing to accept development aid.
The government would rather make sure that
donor support tied in with development priorities of the nation.
“We will politely decline aid that is not in
line with Ghana’s development priorities.”
It should also be consistent with the effort
at increasing efficiency and value for money in public sector expenditures.
Mr. Osafo-Maafo said this in an address read
for him at the high-level conference on Ghana Beyond Aid in Bolgatanga.
The programme was organized with support from
STAR-Ghana, a multi-donor pooled funding mechanism, Integrated Social
Development Centre (ISODEC), TAMA Foundation and the Northern Development
Authority (NDA).
The two-day conference brought together the
academia, Civil Society Organizations, Regional Ministers, Municipal and
District Chief Executives, traditional and religious leaders in Northern, Upper
East and Upper West Regions.
Mr. Osafo-Maafo noted that the three regions
were a popular destination for aid and direct donor support and said, “While
this is welcoming, it is important to take stock and see if we are indeed
achieving the expected impact”.
He made reference to dwindling volumes of aid
and it was time the nation moved aggressively towards modernizing its
agriculture.
The three Northern Regions with their flat
arable land offered the country the best area to start the agricultural
modernization.
He added that the government was creating the
right environment that would both improve conditions for small holder farmers
and favour large scale commercial agriculture.
Ghana Beyond Aid was about diversification of
the economy with clear shift towards agriculture-led industrialization.
He spoke of the increasing attraction of Ghana
to giant global industries including Nissan and Volkswagen (VW) who had
signalled readiness to establish assembling plants in the country.
“Government will ensure that Northern Ghana
will have its fair share of these emerging opportunities.”
Dr Hakeem Wemah, Board Chairman of the
Northern Development Authority and Chairman of the high-Level conference, said
the area had been and remained a major beneficiary of development assistance
because of the level and depth of poverty.
Grant-aided programs had financed education,
health care, agriculture, roads and bridges, nutrition interventions, school
feeding and occasionally humanitarian relief when the people were faced
disasters like flooding.
“We recall the Upper Region Agricultural
Development Programme (URADEP) largely World Bank funded, which was the main
driver of agricultural transformation in the 1970s and 1980s in the Upper
Regions, Northern Regional Rural Integrated Programme (NORRIP) largely funded
by Canada which invested in water resources and social programmes in the
Northern Region.
Both died when donor funds ceased. No
post-mortem was ever carried out,” Dr Wemah added.
He identified the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) as a major investor in agriculture through
its Feed the Future Programme and the Millennium Challenge Initiative.
There were also government initiatives that
had drawn in the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), the Japan
International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the International Fund for
Agriculture Development (IFAD), which had been making major strides in health,
social protection and pro-poor growth.
GNA