President John Agyekum Kufuor on Monday asked the donor community to develop a new paradigm of technical co-operation to meet current realities in recipient countries.

In a speech read on his behalf at the opening session of the Third Roundtable Conference on Technical Co-operation, the President said there was the urgent need to tailor technical co-operation to the demands of recipient countries, which were markedly different from the current regime of co-operation dating back several years.

President Kufuor said because technical co-operation programmes lacked national ownership and were donor-driven, it sometimes makes accountability on the part of recipients difficult.

About 60 participants are attending the two-day conference organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to examine the political steps necessary to ensure that international technical co-operation makes a lasting impact on indigenous capacities and helps to transform peoples' lives.

It is on the theme: "Reforming Technical co-operation for capacity Development." President Kufuor criticised the practice of attaching technical personnel to technical co-operation-supported projects in developing countries, saying this was making it difficult to retain nationally trained personnel.

"Due to poor conditions of service, even where governance situation has improved, the level of brain drain in our countries is on the increase." Besides, the President said, much more cost was incurred caring for one expatriate technical assistant personnel than it would otherwise have cost in engaging the services of many local experts.

"Even of greater concern is the fact that often times, for reasons ranging from lack of counterpart personnel and funds to poor institutional arrangement, very little capacity gets built and the cycle is repeated under another or the same donor funding," he said.

President Kufuor also questioned the setting up of special units for the delivery of donor assisted programmes with their own staff, arguing out that such moves invariably did not guarantee the sustainability of the programmes.

Mr Alfred Sallia Fawundu, Resident Representative of UNDP said capacity building held the key to development strengthening of national capacity needed to be at the forefront of national development efforts.