Over 1700 participants including more than 100 ministers and heads of agencies from developing and donor countries, emerging economies, UN and multilateral institutions, global funds, foundations, and 80 civil society organizations attended the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness hosted by the Government of Ghana in Accra, 2-4 September 2008.

The HLF3 allowed reviewing progress on the Paris Declaration implementation based on evidence collected by the Monitoring Survey applied in 54 countries. In addition, the evaluation of how 8 recipient and 11 donor countries are implementing the Paris principles contributed to identify where more actions are needed to invigorate the aid effectiveness agenda and achieve the targets set for 2011.  An overall progress report provided an overview of work on the 56 commitments in the Paris Declaration, and a consolidated analytic overview of major “workstreams” intended to take stock, share experience, and disseminate good practices.

The Accra Agenda for Action (AAA), adopted in Accra on September 4, reflects the international commitment to support the reforms needed to accelerate an effective use of development assistance and helps ensure the achievement of the MDGs by 2015. The AAA, the result of an extensive process of consultation and negotiations among countries and development partners, focuses the aid effectiveness agenda on the main technical, institutional, and political challenges to full implementation of the Paris principles. 



Key points agreed in the Accra Agenda for Action:

Predictability – developing countries will strengthen the linkages between public expenditures and results, and donors will provide 3-to 5-year forward information on their planned aid to partner countries.

Ownership – developing country governments will engage more with parliaments and civil society organizations.

Country systems – partner country systems will be used to deliver aid as the first option, rather than donor systems, and donors will share their plans on increasing use of country systems.

Conditionality – donors will switch from reliance on prescriptive conditions about how and when aid money is spent to conditions based on the developing country’s own development objectives.

Untying – donors will elaborate individual plans to further untie their aid.

Aid fragmentation – donors agree to avoid creating new aid channels, and donors and countries will work on country-led division of labor.

Partnerships – all actors are encouraged to use the Paris Declaration principles, and the value of South-South cooperation is welcomed.

Transparency – donors and countries will step up efforts to have mutual assessment reviews in place by 2010. These will involve stronger parliamentary and citizen engagement and will be complemented with credible independent evidence.