Africa urged to lead aid inflow

2008-09-02 11:25

Pascal Fletcher

Accra - Africa should "take the driver's seat" to ensure it reaps full benefit of aid flows from the rich world, including increasing funds from powerful economic players like China, a World Bank vice-president said on Monday.

Speaking ahead of an international conference on aid effectiveness in Ghana, the bank's vice-president for Africa, Obiageli Ezekwesili, said countries that receive aid must improve their capacity to use it efficiently and transparently.

The September 2-4 conference in Accra, which will bring together more than 100 donor and recipient states, aims to achieve more effective use of the more than $100bn in development aid that is channelled to countries every year. More than $30bn of this goes to Africa, the poorest continent.

"It is not the amount of money that matters, it is the impact ... output and outcome have become central," Ezekwesili said in an Africa-wide video news conference broadcast from the Ghanaian capital.

She said African governments should take responsibility for maintaining control over, and making the best use of, aid and investment flows pouring in from more developed partners, which now included fast-growing economies like China and India.

"(Recipient) countries should be in the driver's seat to set the agenda, deal with the kind of support they want," she said.

The World Bank official said African states could use to their advantage China's aggressive trade and aid offensive on the continent, which has seen Beijing pump billions of dollars into projects from infrastructure to oil.

Corruption risk

While many African leaders praise China's "no strings" approach to aid and investment, critics say it undercuts Western attempts to fight corruption and improve accountability and transparency in aid and development projects.

Ezekwesili said it was up to the international community, through institutions like the World Bank, to help African states improve their negotiating capacity and safeguards to obtain the best possible benefits from aid, wherever it came from.

"Africa is the best player to determine in a lot of ways the nature of the engagement that it wants with the providers of finance," she said.

Three years ago in Paris, a previous international meeting of aid donors and recipients agreed on the principle that developing countries should have more control over the kind and use of the aid that they received.

This week's Accra meeting aims to strengthen this principle, but British aid charity Oxfam accused some major donors, such as the US and Japan, of "dragging their feet".

"This isn't just a food fight between bureaucrats. Until you solve the political question of who should shape development, you cannot solve the problems of poverty and inequality," Oxfam delegation head Robert Fox said.

At the same time, anti-corruption campaigners like Berlin-based Transparency International said there was still a lack of sufficient local oversight and accountability in recipient countries to prevent theft or waste of aid funds.

- Reuters