SEND-Ghana to track donor funded projects

“Making Local Revenue work for Citizens”, a project aimed at promoting accountability in the use of donor aid and revenue from the extractive sector has taken off.

The one-year project is being implemented in some selected districts in Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions by SEND-Ghana, a non-governmental orgasisation, with support from Oxfam.

Madam Clara Osei-Boateng, the Director of Policy Advocacy Programmes of SEND-Ghana, who spoke at an inception meeting on the project in Tamale, said it to track the use of the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) to promote accountability.

The meeting was to formally introduce the project to its identified stakeholders and hold initial discussions to clarify the implementation process and also to identify the possible areas for collaboration to ensure success.

They included representatives from district assemblies where the project is being implemented, researchers, oil and gas coalition, and grassroots civil society organisations (CSOs).

Madam Osei-Boateng said the project would focus on the health and agricultural sectors monitoring; how development initiatives funded through ABFA were selected; their implementation status and how much money was involved.

She said SEND-Ghana would build the capacity of grassroots CSO actors and facilitating citizen platforms to hold their district assemblies to account on the use of such resources.

Dr Ishmael Ackah, the Head of Policy Unit of Africa Center for Energy Policy, described the performance of the country regarding the use of her oil revenues as below average.

This is because, he said, some of the initiatives the revenues were spent on did not represent immediate priorities of the country.

Dr Ackah suggested that the selection of projects funded through ABFA should be guided by an evidence-based acceptable framework to ensure the judicious use of the revenues for maximum benefit to the country.

Mr Ayueboro Adama, of the Policy Planning and Budget Directorate of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, said funds allocated to the Ministry through ABFA were used to sponsor the fertilizer subsidy programme, irrigation, and block farming projects across the country.

Mr Adama welcomed the project and called for efficient stakeholder collaboration to ensure success in terms of accountability in the use of the resources from the extractives sector.