The changing nature of UK aid to Ghana

Purpose, scope and rationale

The UK has a long-standing development partnership with Ghana, having invested over £2 billion in aid over the last two decades. However, in line with Ghana’s achievement of lower-middle income status in 2010, the aid relationship between the two countries is evolving. Since 2012, the portfolio has been reoriented towards helping Ghana overcome its economic and governance challenges and mobilise the resources to finance its own development. However, Ghana’s persistent poverty and growing inequality suggests that UK aid still has a role to play in delivering better human development outcomes and protecting the results of past assistance.

This is the first country portfolio review by ICAI, representing a new way of analysing the impact of UK aid at country level. It is a qualitative review and will assess the relevance, effectiveness and sustainability of all UK official development assistance (ODA) flows to Ghana relative to the UK’s objectives, with an emphasis on the following:

• Transforming the Ghana economy: the contribution of UK aid to inclusive growth in Ghana.
• Leaving no one behind: the contribution of UK aid to tackling extreme poverty and vulnerability in Ghana, including through addressing gender disparities.
• Strengthening Ghanaian institutions: the contribution of UK aid to the development of competent and sustainable Ghanaian institutions.
• Transition in the UK-Ghana partnership: the management of transition in the UK-Ghana partnership and the safeguarding of past development gains.

Our review will cover all UK ODA to Ghana from 2011 to 2019.  This encompasses the shift in the programmatic focus of UK aid as articulated through the Department for International Development (DFID) Ghana Operational Plan 2011-2015  and accelerated in the DFID Ghana Business Plan 2016/17-2019/20.

The review will be of all bilateral UK aid to Ghana from all UK government departments and the UK imputed share of multilateral aid. The review will also look at other official flows, but only in terms of the coherence between ODA and these flows (see Box 1 for an explanation of terms).

Background

Ghana has enjoyed political stability for over 20 years. Since the return to democracy in 1992, the country has three times voted out the incumbent government in contested but peaceful and free elections. Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African country to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 target of halving extreme poverty and by 2015 had halved the number of hungry people. It was also able to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water, achieve universal primary education and gender parity in primary education, reduce HIV prevalence, and increase access to information communications technology, in line with the MDGs. After reaching lower-middle income status in 20105 and with the country’s first oil revenue coming on stream in 2011, Ghana’s economy saw rapid growth up to 2013, bolstering employment and reducing reliance on aid.

From 2012, Ghana began to experience deteriorating macroeconomic conditions, with fiscal and balance of payment deficits in excess of 10% of gross domestic product. By 2014, the macro-economy had developed large fiscal and current account deficits, high inflation and a sharp depreciation of the currency. In April 2015, an International Monetary Fund three-year Extended Credit Facility of about $916 million was approved, assisting economic recovery, but economic growth during the 2014 and 2017 period was considerably slower, even though the country retained its middle-income status. By 2016, the number of people living below the international extreme poverty line had increased again and income inequality overall had worsened slightly. Over the review period, Ghana has continued to face development challenges. It has made only slow progress in improving the quality of education, reducing under-five and infant mortality and improving sanitation.

Governance concerns, an inefficient public sector, rising debt and over-reliance on commodities are among the risks to Ghana’s continued development. Ghana continues to face substantial challenges in improving agricultural productivity, managing rapid urbanisation, adapting to climate change and other environmental stresses on its economy, and addressing hunger and other forms of malnutrition. There are inequalities in development outcomes between the north and south of the country, and there is a growing urban/rural divide. Inequality within regions has also increased.11 Women and other vulnerable groups face inequality of opportunities and resources and, too often, they face violence. Ghana’s leadership is strongly committed to growth and poverty reduction. Since taking office in 2017, Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, has been vocal about moving the country “beyond aid”, which is generally understood as a policy of reorienting Ghana’s external partnerships towards increased self-reliance in addressing development challenges. Overall, all ODA flows to Ghana have been declining. In the five years between 2008 and 2012, development partners committed on average $1.79 billion per year in constant 2016 terms to Ghana. In the subsequent five-year period, from 2013 to 2017, the equivalent commitment was $1.35 billion on average per year, or a reduction of 25%.

UK aid to Ghana has shifted in volume, instruments used and programmatic focus. Over the five years to 2017, bilateral UK aid each year averaged only half of what had been provided over the previous five-year period. There have also been changes in the composition of bilateral aid, with a shift away from budget support in favour of bilateral projects, increased investment in livelihoods and economic development and a relative decline in health and education.

With bilateral aid reduced, the UK’s main aid contribution to Ghana is now through multilateral channels. This was estimated at 73% of the total in 2016, compared to 45% in 2011 (see Figure 1).15 The increased share in 2015 and 2016, however, was largely on account of disbursements under the three-year IMF Extended Credit Facility (18% and 68% of the imputed share respectively). Nonetheless, the growth in the imputed share means that estimated total UK aid support to Ghana grew by 47% between 2011 and 2016. The largest UK aid-supported multilateral partners in Ghana are the World Bank (contributing over 20% of all official donor commitments to Ghana in the review period), the IMF, the EU, the African Development Bank and the UN family. In the UN family the contributions from the International Fund for Agricultural Development and UNICEF are the most significant.

Figure 1: UK Aid spend in Ghana

Review questions

The review is built around the evaluation criteria of relevance, effectiveness and sustainability. It will address the questions and sub-questions listed in Table 1:

Table 1: Our review questions

Methodology

Our review is at portfolio level. This means that we will focus our assessment on the contribution of UK aidfinanced interventions to the achievement of its strategic objectives in Ghana. According to our initial review of DFID Ghana’s business plans,the objectives for UK aid spend in Ghana are summarised as follows:

• Strengthened governance: During the 2011-2019 review period the UK aimed to strengthen democratic governance and the ability of Ghanaians to make demands of their government and hold it to account, to support public financial management reforms, to strengthen domestic revenue mobilisation and the management of natural resource revenues, and to help Ghana tackle corruption.
• Promoting prosperity: During the period the UK aimed to improve the national investment climate, to diversify the economy and develop domestic markets, and to support entrepreneurship in the north, with the potential to create quality, sustainable jobs.
• Improving human development outcomes and helping the most vulnerable: During the period the UK aimed to improve selected human development outcomes for Ghanaians in education and health, and to improve and expand the safety net for the very poorest, most vulnerable and marginalised groups.

From 2016 UK aid has also included the cross-cutting objective of strengthening the resilience of poor communities to better withstand the impact of climate, economic shocks and pandemic disease.

Our approach will involve collecting and assessing secondary evidence on the performance of bilateral and multilateral ODA flows and technical assistance. This will be supplemented with selected primary evidence for the purposes of validation and gap-filling. We will also collect evidence on portfolio-level performance, including feedback from key stakeholders in government, public sector bodies, civil society, professional organisations and the private sector. We will use this evidence to explore the achievement of the UK aid portfolio against its strategic objectives for Ghana. We will also assess the management of the country portfolio and the quality of development partnerships including with supported multilateral partners. Our methodology will include a strong element of citizen voice, to test the claimed achievements of UK aid and their relevance to the needs and priorities of Ghanaian citizens.

We will organise our work according to three themes: 1) governance and anti-corruption, 2) human development and 3) inclusive growth and private sector development. These themes coincide with the main strategic objectives of UK aid and will be the basis for our sampling of individual programmes for in-depth review.

The review methodology will include the following main components (see also Figure 2)

• Component 1 – Strategy review: We will analyse stratagies and policies at the global, regional, country and thematic/sector level, from relevant UK government departments including UK aid. We will assess the objectives of UK aid in Ghana, across the UK departments involved in delivering aid, and assess the relevance and effectiveness of the portfolio relative to these objectives by exploring portfolio-level results planning and the objectives and design of key bilateral, centrally managed and multilateral programmes. The strategy review desk work will be complemented by stakeholder consultation.
• Component 2 – literature review: We will undertake three reviews of selected independent literature on issues salient to the Ghana context and the review, to assess the relevance, effectiveness and sustainability of the portfolio in this context. The three review topics are set out in Table 2.

Table 2: Literature review topics and rationale

• Component 3 – UK aid programming review Centrally managed programme reviews: We will conduct indepth reviews of the application We will collect and analyse existing ODA data (UK aid and all ODA to Ghana: volume, distribution and share). We will collect and analyse secondary evidence of the relevance, performance and sustainability of UK aid-supported programmes in Ghana and of progress against UK aid objectives (as summarised above) for the portfolio. We will collect this data and evidence through four types of review:
  • i) An initial high-level programme mapping and collection of data on UK and other ODA to Ghana.
  • ii) A rapid desk review of the design and performance against programme objectives of the most relevant bilateral programmes, multilateral aid and UK-supported international non-governmental organisation (NGO) programming.
  • iii) In-depth reviews of the design, implementation and performance of UK aid portfolio interventions in selected programming focus areas that persisted throughout the period, as case studies into the changing nature of UK aid in Ghana. The in-depth desk reviews will draw on existing DFID and independent secondary reviews and evaluations. Key stakeholder interviews and, in some cases, visits to programme sites will complement the desk work to verify results and collect feedback from stakeholders and citizens generally and those directly targeted by programmes.
  • iv) At the portfolio level we will identify relevant outcome indicators19 to collect data on portfolio effectiveness. This quantitative assessment will be supplemented by desk review of secondary sources, and stakeholder consultation in Ghana and the UK.

Figure 2: Components of our methodology

• Component 4 – Stakeholder consultation: The aim of stakeholder consultation is to solicit feedback from key institutional informants and Ghanaian citizens across the themes of interest for the review. The stakeholder consultations will complement the desk-based reviews of UK aid and government of Ghana strategies, programming and results, including the in-depth case studies.

We will conduct interviews with a broad range of stakeholders to validate existing data on programme relevance, effectiveness and sustainability and help assess the contribution of programmes to portfolio achievement, while ensuring that properly triangulated and generalisable findings emerge from the field work engagements. The interviews will cover the selected programming case studies but will also pay attention to the overall UK aid portfolio and its performance in Ghana.

The two categories of stakeholders identified for consultation are:

1. Key institutional informants – institutions and individuals with information on UK aid-supported interventions in Ghana, either because they are directly involved in the interventions, or because they are informed about the UK-Ghana partnership, or because they understand and/or work and live in the context. Key target institutional informant groups for interviews and workshops are:
   • UK government officials involved in the aid programme and the UK’s wider diplomatic and trade engagements with Ghana
   • UK development NGOs with activities in Ghana
   • third-party implementers of UK aid-funded programmes
   • Ghanaian and international academics working on relevant issues in Ghana
   • Ghanaian government informants, across a range of relevant central government and regional ministries and agencies
   • Ghanaian members of parliament from both the incumbent and opposition parties
   • Ghanaian businesses or their representatives (such as chambers of commerce)
   • Ghanaian civil society organisations, think tanks, research institutes and relevant professional associations and bodies.
2. Citizens – citizens of Ghana who should have either directly or more generally benefited from UK aid-supported programmes in Ghana. Box 2 sets out how we will be incorporating citizen voice into the review.

The field-level engagement with informants will add significant value by bringing primary voices from citizens into the review, as leads for further exploration therein. It will also help us validate the evidence and fill any gaps in the programme documentation to strengthen the review’s evidence base.

To support the field work and increase our geographical breadth, a Ghanaian research team will be engaged to consult with key stakeholders and citizens at sub-national level over a two-month period.

The evidence collected through this methodology will be analysed using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to triangulate, validate and synthesise the range of secondary literature and field research evidence.

Sampling approach

The UK aid portfolio between 2011 and the first quarter of 2019 includes a large number of interventions across bilateral and multilateral aid from different UK government departments. In order to balance breadth and depth in our analysis, we will undertake case studies of selected UK aid portfolio interventions through desk reviews and complementary field research and engage with stakeholders and citizens in Ghana in selected regions and districts.

Our sampling approach is layered. The first layer is the UK aid programming. We will select ongoing UK aid programming focus areas: in other words, areas of consistent support over the review period such as girls’ education, community health or social accountability. This aligns with the way in which UK aid has been working in Ghana: for each of the country plan objectives, UK aid bilateral programmes have worked in these focus areas through groups of programmes and projects over several bilateral programming iterations or cycles. By selecting these programming groups as our unit of analysis, we can explore the contribution of these groups over time to portfolio objectives. We have selected the programming focuses by review theme and against the review framework, to include both better- and worse-performing programmes and highbudget and low-budget cases.

The second layer is the sampling of regions and districts, which is determined by the case study sample, although not all sites will have all sampled programmes and not all the sampled programmes have clear subnational implications. We have selected eight districts20 across two regions that have a concentration of programming of interest, and that also display maximum variation of district socio-economic circumstances and location. The regions include the Northern Region, where UK aid has many overlapping programming sites, and the Western Region, which also has overlapping programming sites plus programming related to oil and gas. Our sampled districts also provide at least one district for each sampled programme for which such differentiation is relevant, in which these programmes are not active. This provides opportunities for leads on the contribution of UK aid, all other things being equal, for follow-up in other evidence sources for the review.

Figure 3: Sampling strategy

The third layer is the selection of institutional informants and citizens for consultation. While the review will be undertaking consultation with general institutional informants and citizens in general in each district visited, the programme sample determines additional specific institutional informants and citizen groups to be consulted. The field research team will work from a menu of field research methods, including semistructured interviews, focus group discussions and informal chats. Which method is selected is dependent on the consultation focus, district and informant type. How individual citizens of a type are to be selected for consultation is in turn determined by the field research methods. The review will aim to be inclusive in the overall sample, and reach women, disabled people and marginalised groups. Figure 4 provides a summary of the sampling strategy.

In applying this sampling strategy, the review will cover about 53% of UK aid bilateral spend over the review period, and eight out of 142 districts in which UK aid has specifically worked. Table 3 provides examples of the interventions sampled.

Table 3: Sampled programming focuses and examples of associated interventions

Limitations to the methodology

Difficulty in linking UK aid portfolio interventions to observed progress (positive or negative) against portfolio
objectives. In most of the UK aid intervention areas, the UK aid programmes represent one set of interventions
among many, including from the government of Ghana, in a complex and changing UK and Ghana context.
The use of an in-depth case study approach to data collection and analysis, with analysis across the case
studies using different data sources and mixed methods, will help tease out how UK aid contributed (positively
or negatively, intentionally or unintentionally) relative to other factors in different programming contexts.

Generalisability of findings from case studies, sample bias and selection bias. Because of the scope of the portfolio, and because of the limited sub-national sample size and the fact that the sample of citizen respondents is not being selected statistically, there is the limitation that the respondents are not necessarily truly representative of the appropriate populations concerned and that invalid or ungeneralisable findings can be made. This will be mitigated by rigorous application of qualitative research principles, including the triangulation of evidence across stakeholder interviews, secondary sources and quantitative data, a constant consideration of context as a check on generalisability of findings from specific sites, a commitment to follow leads through in the research, and the commitment and processes to validate findings and conclusions with stakeholders.

Overlap. Because the field survey will be undertaken in parallel to the desk review of secondary data, we may discover some of the evidence we need to validate or data gaps we need to fill when we have already designed the field research tools and begun implementation. This will be mitigated by the fact that the field research is over a two-month period and the country research manager is a member of the core review team and will be working closely with both the field team and the review team, ensuring that necessary adjustments are made to the research instruments and tools as the work progresses.

Language. There is the limitation that while the field research will be undertaken in English, some of the respondents in rural areas may be more fluent and better able to express their thoughts in their local languages. This will be mitigated by the country research team making use of independent translators to engage communities and citizens in their own language. All three members of the research team also speak Twi, which is the most commonly spoken second language in the country.

Risk management

Quality assurance

The review will be carried out under the guidance of ICAI lead commissioner Tamsyn Barton, with support from the ICAI secretariat. The review will be subject to quality assurance by the service provider consortium.

Both the methodology and the final report will be peer-reviewed by an eminent academic working on development in Ghana.

Timing and deliverables

The review will be executed within ten months, starting from early March 2019.