African Partnership for Development – Fostering Development Through Aid Effectiveness and Accountability: 0.5
Postscript: Score [0.5]
G8 leaders affirmed that development is a common challenge and that aid effectiveness is a shared responsibility. While they acknowledged that all commitments have not been achieved in full – there is a gap of USD 1.27 billion in current dollars relative to OECD estimates for 2010 – they maintained that ODA is a significant component of development financing. For example, despite the global economic crisis, the G8’s ODA increased from USD $82.55 billion to USD $89.25 billion in current dollars between 2009 and 2010.
G8 leaders also expressed their full support for mutual accountability and transparency with a strong focus on results. They welcomed the first African Union and NEPAD Accountability Report on the G8/Africa Partnership. Additionally, they urged all donors and stakeholders to develop a more comprehensive and coordinated approach to aid effectiveness in partnership with civil society founded on political will, evidence-based assessment, and transparency. They also called on the recipients of aid to improve transparency while recognizing that individual countries will proceed at their own pace. Ahead of the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to be held in South Korea later this year, G8 leaders welcomed efforts to implement the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action, and called for a review of the Aid Effectiveness Agenda, which recognizes the shift towards broader issues of development outcomes and impacts.
Fundamentally, G8 leaders acknowledged that major challenges persist, most notably “involving new stakeholders in the development agenda, including new donors and the private sector, enhancing the impact of aid, limiting aid fragmentation through a better division of labor, strengthening institutional capacities, and increasing accountability and transparency”. To this end, they reaffirmed their commitment to mobilize resources, particularly ODA, to foster development and to improve aid effectiveness.
To be sure, however, G8 leaders fell short of pledging concrete commitments to improve the coordination of ODA by donor countries and to enhance aid transparency, including the reduction of transaction costs. Therefore, the G8 is assigned a score of 0.5.