The Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness Conference opened on Tuesday with key speakers stressing the need for urgency and commitment in moving the aid discussion forward.
"There is the need to move forward with a new sense of urgency. We must not merely talk about things. We must act," Mrs Mary Chinery-Hesse, Chief Adviser to President John Agyekum Kufuor, who co-chaired the opening of the conference, told delegates.
"We have to admit that the pace of progress made since 2005 is too slow. We need to increase our efforts at reform and action to meet the aid effectiveness target we have committed to for 2010."
Mrs. Chinery-Hesse said in spite of efforts made over the years, aid was getting more fragmented and the challenge now was to focus on greater alignment.
The Accra Forum is a mid-term review of progress and what donor countries and recipient nations have committed themselves to do by 2010 following the Paris Declaration in 2005.
In Paris, the countries committed to use aid resources effectively sparing no effort to accelerate growth and achieve better development outcome, especially to reduce poverty for the millions of people around the world. This is to be achieved through scaling up aid and good practices of aid delivery and management.
The Accra meeting, therefore, is to take stock of progress in terms of the principles anchored in the five commitments of the Paris Declaration, which are ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for development results, mutual accountability and monitoring and evaluations systems.
Mrs. Chinery-Hesse said the time had come to determine if the Paris Declaration had made a positive impact on the management of the development assistance and whether it had assisted in ridding aid administration of inertia, entrenched bad habits and resistance to change.
"We should remind each other that urgent and decisive action is needed to mitigate the strain on the international aid system. Let us also remind ourselves that addressing inequalities of income and opportunity within countries and between states is essential to global progress.
"Aid effectiveness is about generating better development results to counter these inequalities. This ought to be at the heart of all we do," she said.
Mrs. Chinery-Hese said the conference would be adjudged a success if there was an agreement to move forward on the Paris Agenda with a new sense of urgency.
She expressed the hope that donor countries would pledge to give indication on the definite prioritized steps they intended to take by revealing their capacity weaknesses as well as demonstrate their support to recipient nations to also strengthen their capacities.
Speaking on behalf of the UN Development Group, Ms Ann Veneman, Executive Director, UNICEF, noted that in 2007 less than half of aid was distributed according to schedule and said this could only be turned when more commitment was shown by donors and partners.
She therefore called for a renewed commitment and action to the Paris Declaration principles saying this must be achieved in Accra if we need to move forward.
Mr. Jan Cedegreen, Chairman of the Working Party on the Aid Effectiveness, admitted that the efforts being made were not enough even though some steady progress had been made for aid to become untied.
"Developing countries need to strengthen their capacities to manage aid because it is only through this that donors can help," he said.