THE PARIS DECLARATION ON AID EFFECTIVENESS AND DONOR COORDINATION: A Comparative Study of The United States, Canada and China in Ghana

Sammanfattning: International development agencies, as well as government partners, agreed on five principles that aim at making aid more effective through the Paris Declaration (PD) in 2005. These Principles include ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for results and mutual accountability. The principles aim at making aid effective and predictable. Most importantly, donors agreed to coordinate their activities with other donors to reduce aid fragmentation. Contrarily, some have argued that both donors and recipient have embraced Paris "mainly in form, rather than in substance" and that the PD is dying (Brown, 2016). As a recipient country itself, Ghana has been one of the active players in ensuring aid effectiveness in accordance with the Paris Agenda. The country has however been slow to development. As a result, this research aims to investigate and take a closer look at how donors have implemented the PD in the country. The research takes the approach of a comparative study of the United States, Canada, and China in Ghana. The main research method used in this study is a qualitative research method. The study revolves around a single case study of Ghana but analysis three different donors in their implementation of the Paris Declaration in the country. The study found that before the Paris Declaration, development assistance in Ghana was ineffectiveness. Though Ghana was among the top aid recipients in Africa, socio-economic development was slow. Issues of corruption and macroeconomic mismanagement led to the poor economic performance and Ghana has then been described “a chronic case of economic failure” (Toye, 1991). Moreover, coordination among donors was nearly non-existent as donors did what they want with their money. The study, however, notes that after the adoption of the Paris agreement, the state of development aid in Ghana is seeing an improvement and donors are coming together to work on projects which is eventually reducing issues such as effort duplication, aid fragmentation and transaction cost.