Wa, Nov. 24, GNA - An aid effectiveness forum has been organised for stakeholders from the Upper West Region at Wa to validate district aid effectiveness reports and to develop regional indicators and reports.

The participants made up of chiefs, community members, donor partners and civil society organisations would review the Paris Declaration indicators to evaluate donor projects. They would also use the regional indicators to assess health, education and agricultural projects and how these had been impacting on the lives of the people at the grassroots level. ActionAid Ghana and ProNet, NGOs organised the forum to build the capacity of the participants to develop a regional report card. Addressing the participants, Madam Alima Abu, Acting Programme Manager of ActionAid Ghana, Upper West Region Development Programme, said her organisation's vision has been working with people to reduce poverty and injustice and promote equality in society. "For us to achieve our vision of a world without poverty and injustice, there is the need to work intensively together with the poor and excluded people to eradicate poverty, injustices and inequality", she pointed out.

She said donor countries have been playing significant roles in influencing and setting the development agenda of aid recipient countries, which have direct impact on the lives of the people.

Madam Abu said there had been attempts of a joint commitment by the donor countries and recipient governments to reform key aid processes. She said this was aimed at bringing a change in the management and delivery of aid, hence the development of what is referred to as the Paris Declaration of which Ghana government and most donors in the country were signatories.

She noted that discussions around the ratification of the Paris Declaration in Ghana had always been limited to government and donors, despite the impact that the implementation of the declaration could have on the lives of the ordinary people.

Madam Abu said it was for this reason that a Swedish Christian Social Democrats approached ActionAid Ghana to collaborate on bringing the voices and perspectives of local civil society, especially those outside Accra into discussions around Paris Declaration and wider aid effectiveness issues.

She said the regional card would be submitted to the next global review at a higher level forum scheduled to be held in Accra in September 2008 to influence future aid processes that would impact positively on the lives of the poor.

Madam Emma Kpeno, Programme Assistant of ProNet noted that donor partners and civil society organisations had made giant moves in the development agenda of poor countries yet the impact of these had not benefited the poor.

She said transparency and accountability between donor partners and recipient governments had remained excellent only on paper while the people keep on suffering from poverty, hunger and unemployment.