MORE TRADE NOT AID (FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5)

THE High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness ended in Accra yesterday with a commitment to adopt concrete measures to operationalise the Accra Agenda for Action.
It is worthy of note that although participants in the conference acknowledged the importance of aid in promoting the development processes in countries such as Ghana, Uganda and Tanzania, they also stressed the need for a paradigm shift from aid as a handout to the promotion of trade on equal footing between countries of the South and the North.
Addressing the ministerial session hours before the closing ceremony of the forum in Accra yesterday, President J. A. Kufuor said aid packages should be used to improve the human resource development and infrastructure of recipient countries to enable them to develop the economic muscle to become worthy partners in the international arena. The three countries have been cited among the more successful countries in making aid more effective in delivering social goods to their people in the greater context of fighting poverty.
The high level of success of the Accra forum was the wide ranging consultation that characterised deliberations involving civil society organisations, including women's groups, governmental institutions and a cross-section of development agencies across the globe.
Reports indicate that during the talks that preceded the forum, civil society groups unanimously agreed on what they described as "the failure of aid to effectively deliver progress to communities around the world".
They also said more trade should be encountered instead of aid-for-trade that ultimately benefits the donor countries.
The conditionalities attached to most aid packages have consequently left developing countries still bedevilled with chronic underdevelopment and maternal and infant mortality, as well as a low level of literacy.
The Daily Graphic believes that the Accra platform provided the forum to fashion out bilateral and multilateral engagements in a mutually beneficial manner so that donors do not determine what their assistance to poor countries must be used for.
Oftentimes, donors have tied their assistance to poor countries to certain conditionalities such as the engagement of consultants and purchase of project vehicles and goods from the donor countries and in the end more than half of the aid goes back to developed countries.
This explains why developing countries are calling for more trade between the North and South instead of the South receiving handouts from the North.
The Daily Graphic calls for new terms of trade such that developing countries can benefit from the abundant resources in other countries instead of the present arrangement where developing countries continue to be producers of raw materials.
When the terms of trade improve, ordinary people will have the option to improve their status, get basic services to achieve better livelihoods and have a voice in the way international business should be conducted.
The Daily Graphic thinks that after Accra, the focus of the international community should be to help developing countries to unleash their potential to do it by themselves.
More declarations may not work by themselves but the global efforts to get donors to mend the way they engage developing countries in the globalised economy holds the key for the way forward. The aid architecture can become relevant only if the people can take their destinies into their own hands.
But progress also lies in strong political leadership and the ownership of the development process by the people through broad consultation.