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The New Aid Architecture in Ghana: Influencing Policy and Practice?

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Abstract

This article explores the relationships between the new aid architecture, influenced by the Paris Declaration, and exemplified in Ghana by its new Aid Policy and Strategy, and the much longer policy history of donor–Government of Ghana relations in the fields of education and training. The Aid Policy hierarchy of preference for general budget support, unearmarked sector budget support and then project aid confronts a very different reality in the education sector where the project approach is very much alive and well. The issue of donor and political influence on Ghana's education policy is traced from the 1990s up to the new Education Strategic Plan (2010–2020). But it is noted that the process of aid influencing education policies is very different from changing educational practice in ordinary classrooms and training centres.

Cet article examine les relations entre la nouvelle architecture d′aide au developpement ayant pris forme suite à la Déclaration de Paris, illustrée au Ghana par sa nouvelle ‘Politique et Stratégie d′Aide’, ainsi que la longue histoire des relations entre le Ghana et les pays donateurs dans le domaine de l′éducation et de la formation. La Politique d′Aide établit une préférence pour un soutien budgétaire global ou bien un soutien budgétaire sectoriel non ciblé plutôt qu’un soutien pour des projets particuliers. Elle est cependant confrontée à une toute autre réalité dans le secteur de l′éducation, où l′approche basée sur des projets spécifiques est bien vivante. Nous abordons la question de l′influence tant de la politique que des pays donateurs sur la politique d′éducation du Ghana depuis les années 1990s jusqu’au nouveau Plan Stratégique d′éducation (2010–2020). On remarque en particulier que le processus d′aide influençant les politiques d′éducation diffère significativement du processus de changement des pratiques éducatives dans les salles de classes et centres de formation ordinaires.

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Notes

  1. Four years earlier in July 2006, Rwanda had developed its aid policy, the year after the Paris Declaration (Rwanda, 2006). It followed the main lines of Paris but was a very strongly worded statement of government ownership.

  2. There were no responses from non-traditional donors, including from the BRICK countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Korea (Gerster and Ashong, 2010, p. 34).

  3. The 42 interviews and the extended e-mail correspondence since March 2009 have informed this article, though there are only a few direct quotations from these sources. Leslie Casely-Hayford is currently completing a paper that will draw more extensively and explicitly on the interviews, though the great majority will be anonymised.

  4. See NORRAG News 44 (www.norrag.org/issues/44/en/a-brave-new-world-of-emerging-non-dac-donors-and-theirdifferences-from-traditional-donors.html). See also King (2011) on aid effectiveness in relation to fourth High-level Forum in Busan.

  5. Ghana's progress on the MDGs, at the September 2010 summit, reflected more on the previous government that had been in office until the election at the end of 2008.

  6. This has been analysed separately in a fascinating paper by Pedley and Taylor (2009) – see later; nevertheless, brief references to this crucial thread of politics will be made where possible and relevant.

  7. Another account of the origin of the PMU, however, is that it was more a donor-driven initiative designed to get donor money more rapidly and effectively spent.

  8. This should not be interpreted as a criticism of free universal primary education by the Rawlings’ government; indeed, it maintained a very strong priority for basic education throughout the 1990s. This would contrast with later governments as we shall note shortly.

  9. In fact, there was a very considerable input by donors into the formulation of the ESP according to sources very close to the process. In addition, despite the frequent claims made about MoE leadership of the process, both then and now, there have been some major challenges in capacity at Ministry level.

  10. It is widely acknowledged that the Rwandan Government has a stronger hold on their development agenda than Ghana.

  11. For details on what became characterized by some donors as a ‘dual track’ in Ghana, as both the ESP and the recommendations of the White Paper continued in parallel, despite GoG's attempts to demonstrate linkages, see Casely-Hayford and Palmer (2007, pp. 32–33), and Little (2010). The larger background to the dual track, of course, is that the ESP reflected the strong emphasis of the two Rawlings’ governments (1992–2000) upon universal basic education, whereas the new president's education review pointed to more and longer access to upper secondary education, as well as to technical and vocational education.

  12. An unpublished ‘summary statement of donor concerns with the 2007 sector review’ commented that ‘The shift from the current focus on basic education is also dramatic. Under the ESP 32 per cent of the recurrent budget and 34 per cent of the capital budget is allocated to primary. The costing of the White Paper indicates that the per cent of recurrent expenditure for primary education declines to 25.7 per cent, and the capital expenditure declines to 14.8 per cent’ (issues for the Ghana education sector case – 2007) (bilateral donor to King, 22.10.10).

  13. It is not widely known, given the view that USAID only does projects, that no less than two-thirds of all USAID's education to sub-Saharan Africa went for budget support, with conditionalities, in the mid-1990s. The World Bank is also sometimes described as providing budget support to education in Ghana, but MacCarthy's (2008a, p. 36) division of labour study places the WB firmly in the education project aid category.

  14. For examples of this policy history, see Colclough and De (2010) on India, and King (2007) on Kenya.

  15. The identical process is powerfully documented by Mwiria, Assistant Minister of Education for Kenya (2005).

  16. Ghana has an extraordinary’ teachers leave system where at any given time about one-quarter of their teachers are on paid ‘study leave’ – that is a year off on full pay. This still persists today, perhaps not unconnected with the fact that no less than 24 per cent of MPs were formerly teachers, and that the teachers were strongly represented in the Presidential Review Committee.

  17. In 2008, an earlier draft of Ghana Aid Policy stated: ‘The objective is to achieve a doubling of the proportion of general budget support from the current 30 per cent per annum to 60 per cent per annum by 2010’ (GoG, 2008, p. 6).

  18. An example of this would be the attempt by some donors to use the MDBS for pro-poor targeting (as in the education triggers just referred to). There is then a tension between the poverty-targeting of some of the donors and government's ideal of general budget support.

  19. The results of these crucially important reviews were published on 1 March 2011.

  20. Atta Mills's inauguration as new president was in January 2009.

  21. In fact, there has been considerable support to the ESP process from one or two key donor-supported consultants/advisors.

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Acknowledgements

Most of the field research in Accra for this article was carried out jointly with Leslie Casely-Hayford in 2008 and 2009, and was supported by the Research Consortium on Educational Outcomes and Poverty. Apart from the individuals met on these field visits, I owe a great debt of gratitude to colleagues and friends much more knowledgeable about Ghana or development cooperation than I, with whom I have continued to be in contact since the initial fieldwork. These would include Kwame Akyeampong, Terry Allsop, Birger Fredriksen, Ato Essuman, Richard Gerster, Alison Girdwood, Ash Hartwell, Rachel Hayman, Hiroyuki Hattori, Rachel Hinton, Artemy Izmestiev, David Levesque, Murray Macrae, Keiichi Okitsu, Taeko Okitsu, Yukiko Okugawa, David Pedley, Robert Palmer, Charles Tsegah, Yumiko Yokozeki, Kazuhiro Yoshida and Lindsay Whitfield. None of these people, of course, or DFID, are responsible for the ideas expressed here.

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    Kenneth King

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King, K. The New Aid Architecture in Ghana: Influencing Policy and Practice?. Eur J Dev Res 23, 648–667 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2011.26

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