This September, the City of Accra, Ghana will host over 100 ministers from 100 countries Kenya included, to look into how developing countries and marginalised people can fight poverty through an effective aid and donor support that is transparent and accountable to the people. And one that delivers the intended results.

Dubbed the Third High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, the forum that will bring together bilateral and multilateral development agencies, donor organizations, civil society and women organizations from around the world, is expected to discuss the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) that will spell out several development.

Even though the meeting might be far removed from an ordinary Kenyan, its outcome might be felt in every single household. Being a follow-up meeting to the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005 where the donors agreed on the direction for reforming aid delivery and management systems that would produce results.

The Declaration gave governments full responsibilities to plan and decide on how aid is used in their country based on their internal priorities and policies. But it is now raising concerns from the Civil society Organisations (CSOs) and women organisations of how the declaration is being implemented.

They accuse this system, arguing that it might limit how the public’s participation since the government will have the sole authority to decide which areas aid can be used.

While the Paris Declaration calls for donors and partner countries to be accountable to each other in the way such money is used, women are apprehensive that countries without proper gender policies and structures to monitor how this money is used might ignore such matters altogether.

The gender experts argue that without ownership, partnerships and results that has an effect on women’s empowerment; then Accra Agenda for Action might not be a reality to the majority of women.

Similar sentiments are being raised by the CSOs who are arguing that by basing the assessment of ownership on World Bank analysis of national strategies, the Paris Declaration if not reformed by the Accra Agenda is imposing a top-down model.

This according to gender experts fails to recognise the importance of democratically- formulated country strategies, which can lead to donors imposing yet more conditions on developing countries.   Now they want the aid ownership to be driven by countries’ own citizens women included and not by donors or the World Bank.

The fact that the new aid modality encourages basket funding to governments, unlike in the past where each donor could give money individually to CSOs, this new strategy means that donors will have little influence if any on how funds are used.

Proponents from the women’s movement fear that under this arrangement, governments will most likely ignore issues affecting women in the national budget processes like the reproductive health, social services among others.

Going by the government budget plans, areas that often get huge budget allocations are issues dealing with security, with those that affect women directly being under-funded. There is therefore need for a mechanism to monitor how the government applies gender budgeting in its national budget.

Other concerns around this matter are coming from the fact that since women’s issues rarely feature in the national agenda and that some issues affecting women’s rights have always been addressed by civil society, there is likelihood that national budgets might not address these issues with alacrity.

Overall, it is likely that women will benefit as a result of this New Aid modality, however for countries which do not have a national framework on gender, it might be difficult to plan for women’s issues effectively.

And if the new aid modality is to be effective, it must be measured based on the participation of every citizens, civil society, parliaments and women’s organisations in deciding, planning, implementing and assessing national plans, policies, programmes and budgets.

The involvement of local people might be vital especially in helping the government to prioritize in terms of resources allocation and also linking up with other stakeholders like the women’s organizations.

Such policies can make the country attain the overarching goals of the Paris Declaration by reducing poverty and inequality, increasing growth, building capacity and accelerating achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.