Making aid effective | Education | Health | Social protection | Civil society | Governance | Private sector/trade/growth
The UK is Ghana’s largest bilateral donor. DFID’s country business plan (2009 to 2011) for Ghana sets out how DFID will support the country.
There is a strong link to the Ghana Joint Assistance Strategy (GJAS) which was signed by 17 of Ghana’s Development Partners in 2007.
A mid-term review of the GJAS has recently been undertaken to enhance mutual accountability and improve adherence to Paris Declaration principles.
Between 2005 and 2007, DFID provided more than £240 million in support of Ghana’s poverty reduction plans. From 2008 to 2010, we will give at least £250 million in aid, a large proportion of which will be in the form of Poverty Reduction Budget Support (PRBS).
PRBS, coupled with growth in domestic revenues, has helped Ghana to significantly increase spending on health and education.
Ghana continues to receive debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) – £114 million in 2009. It is also benefiting from the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), through which it will receive $4 billion over 40 years from 2005.
Development partners have agreed to share technical resources and to streamline the policy dialogue with Ghana's government in an attempt to reduce their demands on its time.
In 2006, DFID agreed a ten-year Education support programme of £105 million in line with the Abuja process. This was the first 10-year plan for Education in Africa. This achievement has resulted in long-term planning and predictable financing with 31% of the budget allocated to education.
In addition, DFID is investing £4 million as technical assistance over eight years (2006 to 2013) for three complementary strategic priorities:
We have drawn on evidence from DFID’s research consortia (CREATE, RECOUP and EdQual) to inform the next 10-year education sector plan (ESP 2010 to 20) including strengthening policy on out of school children and skills for economic growth.
DFID has also committed £1.14 million from 2008 to 2011 to the NGO, School for Life, which is helping around 12,000 out-of-school children in northern Ghana gain access to formal basic education.
In 2009/10, about 17% of UK funding (in addition to PRBS) was directly used to support Ghana’s health sector. Our current commitments include:
To tackle maternal mortality, DFID committed an additional £6.76 million in 2009 to procure emergency obstetric equipment and is supporting a package of other measures to improve family planning for young people and to reduce unsafe abortion which is still a major cause of maternal deaths (22% to 30%). DFID was instrumental in bringing about free National Health Insurance membership for all pregnant women, which has doubled the number of women delivering in health facilities. National Health Insurance cards (entitling holders to free medical treatment) are now owned by almost half the population - more than double the number registered in 2006.
The rate of HIV/AIDs infection in Ghana is low in comparison with other African countries; partly due to a co-ordinated response by government through establishment of the Ghana Aids Commission.
Through a shared arrangement with Government, the World Bank and DANIDA, DFID provided £7.5 million over three years (2006 to 2009) to support the Government’s response to HIV/AIDs.
DFID also supports a number of health-related initiatives to encourage collaboration between Ghanaian and British research institutes. A continued investment in the health sector by DFID is vital given that Ghana’s progress in the Millennium Development Goals for child and maternal mortality is off-track.
DFID is providing £3.3 million from 2008 to 2012 to help the government of Ghana and the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare (MESW) to develop an improved social protection strategy, which will involve the implementation and monitoring of an innovative new cash transfer programme.
DFID encourages and supports the reform required for MESW to play an enhanced role as the country’s lead social protection agency.
The cash transfer programme, the Livelihoods Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme is expected to benefit 165,000 extremely poor households by 2012/13.
DFID Ghana supports civil society mainly through two competitive grant facilities (about £2 million in 2009/2010) to help strengthen the voice of ordinary Ghanaians on issues affecting them and their ability to hold government and donors to account.
The funds (Ghana Research and Advocacy Fund and Rights and Voice Initiative) have been in existence for five/six years and are both coming to an end, RAVI in June 2010 and G-RAP in March 2011.
DFID and its partners are designing a new multi-donor civil society programme which will run from mid-2010.
Ghana continues to lead the way in Africa on good governance. It was the first country to submit itself to review under the Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) in 2005 and has been regularly reviewed since.
In December 2008 Ghana held a successful election and witnessed a peaceful transition of power to the main opposition party.
President Obama’s visit in July 2009 was widely regarded as recognition of Ghana’s strong record in improving governance, and he noted that Ghana’s example highlighted the ‘fundamental truth’ that development depends upon good governance.
Over a number of years DFID has provided support for public service reform and between 2007 and 2009 we provided £3 million to support reforms of public financial management, such as improving procurement and strengthening oversight by parliament’s public accounts committee.
We are planning future support for the government’s ambitious new financial management reform programme.
DFID also works with various civil society organisations and the UN to build peace particularly in the north of the country. DFID (with other development partners) is contributing £6.5 million sector budget support from 2008 to 2010 to support the government’s natural resources and environmental governance programmes.
We recently approved a £2 million programme of support for climate change and environmental governance.
Development work relies on accurate statistics, and we are therefore also providing support to statistical reform through an adviser seconded to the World Bank and a substantial programme of support to Ghana’s statistics service.
In 2010 we will also be supporting the country’s decennial population and housing census.
Ghana’s economy remains strong with an average annual growth rate of 5% since 1990. This has helped to reduce poverty and today only one in four Ghanaians live below the poverty line as opposed to half the population a decade ago.
To ensure that the economy continues to grow, despite global economic shocks and domestic challenges, concerted action is needed to improve the business environment diversity economic activity and increase Ghana’s exports.
Also, more needs to be done to address regional inequality and to improve livelihoods and increase opportunities for the poor to earn incomes. DFID has set aside approximately £10 million over the period 2005 to 2011 to:
Bookmark with:
What are Bookmarks?
More news stories
Research information from R4D
RSS feed from R4Dopens in a new window
What's RSS?