50 Years of UK-Ghana Partnership

The Country Director of the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom Mr. Mike Hammond has said success of developing countries requires governments "to exercise fiscal responsibility to demonstrate sound budgetary management and to spend its resources wisely and in the name of poverty reduction.

In return, he said development partners need to trust government systems, help develop them and remove the layers of conditionality and bureaucracy which only cause resentment and tension in a relationship that should have brought mutual respect and understanding.

He was speaking at a reception and exhibition held last week to usher in the celebration of 50 years of UK - Ghana development partnership in June.

The celebration dubbed "UK - Ghana Development Partnership" is aimed at highlighting the development partnership between Ghana and the UK as Ghana celebrates its 50th Anniversary of Independence.

It was also part of a series of events to celebrate a Britain in Ghana (BIG) week launched in Accra on the 12th of May 2007.

The DFID country Director further said success requires a Government and a people who are prepared to grow, who are prepared to uphold the values of good governance, human rights and civil liberties and not to suppress them in the name of economic or political doctrine.

He said as a result of the importance of aid to Africa and other developing world, Britain now has a guaranteed Cabinet Minister post in charge of aid as well as a new legislation committing any UK Government to reaching the 0.7% aid target by 2013.

Explaining the negative impacts of conditional aid, Mr. Hammond recalled in the late 90s having a conversation with the then Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance in Uganda.

"He said that for the past week he and his staff had been going through project documents and counting up the number of individual conditionalities imposed on Uganda by the donor community, they had given up when they reached a figure approaching 3,000 on the grounds that nobody would ever remember them, nobody was monitoring them and no government was going to implement 3,000 conditionalities during anybody's life time."

It was at that time that the debate around general budget support, sector support, capacity building and of course the Multilateral Debt Reduction Initiative (MDRI) began to grow, he said.

The DFID Country Director further summed up the rationale for the Ghana -UK celebrations; "We are celebrating a lengthy development engagement with the Government of Ghana. Some may claim 50 years but ours stretches back more than 60 years from 1946 when Britain passed the 'Colonial Development and Welfare Act."

"We are also celebrating DFID's 10th Birthday as a major Development institution," he said.

In his opening remarks the British High Commissioner, H.E Gordon Wetherell explained how the UK- Ghana development partnership had grown from strength to strength.

"All over the world DFID leads the UK Government's fight against world poverty and has established itself as one of the leading development agencies operating today,"

He said in 2006 UK development assistance to Ghana, including contributions to multilateral institutions totalled in excess of £90m. UK is said to be Ghana's largest bilateral donor

In 2006 DFID signed a £105 million 10 year agreement with Ghana to support its education sector in a bid to send every child in Ghana to school.

UK also says it played a crucial role, with the active assistance of President Kufour at Gleneagles meeting in 2005, in securing agreement for Multilateral Debt Relief (MDRI).

This initiative according to the UK helped reduce the Ghanaian debt burden by US$ 4.2 billion. The UK government has also freed up nearly US $300 million of government revenue which no longer has to be paid back to international organisations but can be used to improve the lives and wellbeing of Ghanaians.

UK's global development assistance has been in the form of untied grants for many years. This means no conditionality to employ British Firms when grant financing is provided DFID Ghana is also in the process of developing its new country assistance plan for Ghana. This will set out how the UK will work with Ghana over the next three years.

Added to these, In March 2007, Rt. Hon. Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for International Development announced the development of a new £50 million grant to help Ghana tackle the issue of child and maternal mortality. While no one can deny the fact that the UK is Ghana's biggest donor, development analysts argue that more trade and investment are what it would take reduce poverty.

Link to allAfrica.com: Ghana: 50 Years of UK-Ghana Partnership (Page 1 of 1)