Fragmentation of Projects and the Symbolism of Development Aid in Northern Ghana

Abstract

The symbolism of donor aid has brought humanitarian relief to communities in despair in Northern Ghana, as NGO projects continue to target beneficiaries. Challenges with project implementation processes have, however, reduced their effectiveness and impact. Deploying an ‘adaptive grounded theory’, coupled with questionnaires and interviews, this paper relied heavily on the iterative process of systematic literature review. It investigated the problem of project fragmentation and the imagery of development aids within the five northern regions of Ghana. Focusing on donor projects within the beneficiary communities, the study found joint causation for donor weakness in relation to the imagery of development efforts and beneficiary stress as consequences of the thwarted attempts at poverty intervention. The prognosis is the phenomenon of poverty dance of beneficiaries. Consequently, we conclude that for the effectiveness of substantial aid investments, there is the need to move policy dialogue of development interventions from ‘community needs assessments’ to targeted-infrastructure needs assessment.

Introduction

The cogent discussion on the development aid-growth connection is still a focal area in development financing as the empirical evidence keep mounting from the practice. Although the methodological independence varies, the third sector has made many efforts through empirical observations to analyse the effectiveness of aid in promoting development. Most of such research findings have concluded with issues from ‘aid works’ to ‘aid does not work’. Yet in most scholarly instances, ‘aid works but only under certain conditions’ (Cassimon et al., 2023; Mekasha & Tarp, 2019). Affirming this, the works of Burnside and Dollar famously concluded with an in-depth analysis that: “foreign aid spurs growth in developing economies that practice sound policies, and this further reduces the country’s poverty index” (Burnside & Dollar, 1997).

Even though this may be consistent with some academic literature, the measure of ‘sound economic policy’ has equally generated debate in the current global economic uncertainty. This is so as the country-specifics and policy road maps vary in each aid recipient economy. So has the ambiguities associated with scores of donor projects been exploited by the aid recipient governments, the implementers, as well as the beneficiaries (Hamid & Jahan, 2020; Whitfield & Fraser, 2009).

By the turn of the twenty-first century, the donor aid business frantically needed a new storyline. This led to the constitution of the third sector players as donor project implementers and evaluators to inch up aid effectiveness. They got a boost more precisely, after the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the 1980s produced mass poverty in developing countries. This marked the reorientation and redirection of aid dogmatics towards poverty reduction. It was to be achieved through the processes of ‘partnership’ of donors with host countries, and by ‘participation’ of the beneficiary communities with aid agencies. This contemporary aid regimes were made distinct in nature by the donor country’s philosophies and assertive projects organised through many bilateral agreements.

The revived aid enterprise meant the international NGOs were to improve the facilitation and coordination of aid by standing for the donor country’s interest, in relation to supporting domestically owned development strategies of the host country (Becker, 2019; Fisher, 1997). To achieve consistency between their funds and programmes which will affect developing countries, the donor agencies were to ‘monitor and evaluate’ these development indices. The recipient governments were expected in return, to commit strictly to poverty reduction goals with good governance frameworks and policies of the Millennium Development goals (MDGs). After its expiration, a crusade was further built for continuity with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This time round, the poverty reduction strategies were motivated by a wide range of INGOs agendas, and very specific social policy programmes. These included increasing spending in primary health care, basic education, climate change and clean water. The countryside of several developing countries saw many donor projects crunching for space and attention from the recipient governments. The SDGs in effect brought renewed confidence amongst aid practitioners with swift response to community development projects of all sizes. It further brought the political humanitarian rhetoric, its figuration, and the work of NGOs with the beneficiary communities much closer.

Although these new development aid theorists found solid manifestation in several community projects in northern Ghana, for instance, their processes and project interventions since the 1980s through to the 2000s have been fragmented. Several beneficiary communities in northern Ghana have also been and remained “the same old recipients of multiple donor projects over the same periods”. Evidence of this is manifested in the aid dependency syndrome of ‘poverty dance’ of beneficiaries. With numerous projects infesting these rural communities, aid effectiveness needed to go beyond the symbolism of development aid. Much more, with the rethinking of risk and returns on community development projects, the SDGs policies may in themselves become a desecration if care is not taken with calls for resilience of development projects. The first evidence to be presented here is clearly not the full story of aid ineffectiveness in Ghana, but a contribution to the process. This paper supplements existing empirical evidence of aid projects with in-country stories of aid ineffectiveness.

An Overview of Ghana’s Poverty Dynamics and Donor Influence

The first sub-Saharan country to gain independence, Ghana, became the ‘policy-charm’ of the West, in collaboration towards economic growth and development. This was because within the brief period of political independence, the country plummeted into a deep economic recession, which offered the World Bank (WB) and international monetary fund (IMF) a policy-play ground. Ghana began its policy redirection with the introduction of the structural adjustment programmes (SAP) in the 1980s. The neoliberal policies were aimed at economic and financial stabilisation of the economy and expected to in turn promote growth with a consequential affirmative influence on the peoples’ welfare.

While output growth gradually declined in volumes, the proportionate increase in primary product export grew steadily to 45% of GDP against 12% of manufacturing. The trade ratio was 34% of GNP in favour of imports between 1985 and 1986 (Nelson, 1990). Following the structural change of the economy through the free market approach, most state institutions became weak through the removal of subsidies. This meant public sector workers faced job cuts, reposting, and wage reduction. Huge parts of the Ghanaian population found in the informal economy of agriculture and services faced massive poverty and deprivation. The SAP policies which meant a mechanical rejuvenation of the economic fundamentals through heavy dosage of financial assistance to increase production only increase the nation’s debt. The peoples’ welfare in terms of growth and economic wellbeing was neglected.

Despite these head winds, international and local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) kept a benevolence and “human face” to the structural policies of growth and development in Ghana (Sowa & CEPA, 2002). United in the grief of poverty, was the level of political capriciousness the country was experiencing with military interference until the mid-1990s. The immediate consequence of the economic decline was the overwhelming poverty in both the urban and rural countryside. Many NGOs and NPOs trumped the shores of Ghana to offer relief and humanitarian aid. The plight of the savannah ecological zones with drought and some self-inflicted bushfires made the NGOs move swiftly to Tamale to help the northern regions.

By the first quarter of 1983, the Government of the day embraced another IMF-World Bank supported policy, the economic recovery programme (ERP). It was to curtail the deterioration in the Ghanaian Economy (Konadu-Agyemang, 2000). This policy was to reinforce the structural macro-economic changes that the economy faced neglecting the social and humanitarian hardships once again. The INGOs and bilateral agencies offered numerous relief programmes that had poverty reduction focus and humanitarian assistance to Ghanaians at the same time. As the technocrats were fixated on the political and economic institutional reforms, the International NGOs were collaborating with the local NGOs in dealing with the humanitarian crisis. These agencies instituted community engagement forum and implemented social intervention projects. The imagery of donor aid was gaining the trust of the people.

The enactment of the ‘Programme of Actions to Mitigate the Social Costs of Adjustment’ (PAMSCAD) was the socio-economic agenda explicitly intended to protect the vulnerable and deprived in many poor developing countries. It was instituted to address the hostile concerns of the policy adjustment processes and, particularly, sustain the Ghana experiment (Addo, 2017; Gayi, 1995). More so PAMSCAD was meant as a conciliatory stance as its timing was to increase social spending based on the humanitarian anxieties associated with the implementation of the SAPs/ERPs. It had the much-needed financial muscles coupled with the world-acclaimed development experts from the third sector, leading the implementation processes.

With PAMSCAD, a total of $84 million was to be spent over a two-year period between 1988 to 1989, with most of it as tied and technical aid (Donkor, 2002). The initial plan of the programme was designed to cover twenty-three different projects in five principal areas across the country but most importantly, places hardly hit. These were the five northern regions, the Brong Ahafo and parts of the Volta region. The projects included education, basic needs, and health for vulnerable persons in rural communities with employment generation. This gave birth to the ‘Northern Ghana project’.

With PAMSCAD, however, by March 1990 only eight out of the twenty-three projects could be deemed successful. The mining sectors had a boost with employment in small-scale mining of gold and diamond. Over one million children aged between 6 and 12 were dewormed, whiles most deployed adults gained skills in baking, tailoring and blacksmithing (Cornia, 2001). Agriculture reorienting schemes and credit facilities for peasant farmers through farmer associations in the savannah regions and Volta Region were financed and equipped (Dietz et al., 2013). The Upper Regional Agriculture Development Programme (URADEP) and Volta Regional Agricultural Development (VORADEP) were the two main offspring of PAMSCAD. Given the pronouncement of poverty and the presence of vulnerable people within the northern regions, much attention was given there. Here again, ‘the food-for-work project’ in Northern Ghana implemented by the adventist development relief agency (ADRA) an NGO with sponsorship from PAMSCAD had helped about 2,500 people (Atampugre, 1997; Sowa, 2002).

Despite the ten mobile district planning teams that had been established to be responsible for the implementation and monitoring of PAMSCAD projects, very few were dedicated. Majority were the underpaid public sector staff and local elites in control of the local NGOs. These groups, who had gotten paid much better on the projects, were also in-charge for the long stand consolidation and implementation of the social sector programmes. As the PAMSCAD secretariat closed practically after 3 years of operation, there were still programmes running in most districts. These programmes became the responsibilities of the implementing agencies who did not have the financial authority, as challenges similarly arose. This was because the administration and financial management of PAMSCAD was not coherent. There were different funding sources for the programme. For instance, there were three funding sources for the child malnutrition programme (CMP). They included the World Food Program, the PAMSCAD secretariat, the Ministry of Health and contribution from local communities.

The administration of PAMSCAD was jointly by the Ministries of Finance and Economic Planning and Local Government. The different sector ministries were equally co-opted when projects related to their dominion. For instance, in the implementation of the reduction in Child Malnutrition Programmes, the Ministry of Health was involved with the operation dynamics. The organisational chart included the Project Director under the head of nutrition division in the ministry. He was responsible for the complete implementation of the project but not in isolation from the directors of the ministries of finance and local government. He was further assisted by 7 personnel with similar project titles and had to coordinate all the regional directors of the programme (Barimah, 1993).

This meant right from the inception there were institutional wrangling, and the formation was beset with rivalries. Donors on the programme perceived that the Ghanaian state did not have the absorptive capacity to implement such programmes and sort to court local NGOs as partners to take up the slack (Gary, 1996). The governmental agencies expected the donors to provide the logistical support which was very much lacking. This jeopardised the donor–recipient partnership with most farmer organisations as they were expectant. This meant the lack of ownership and mistrust in the accomplishments and future of the projects.

The NGOs were equally alienated from the design and planning processes and were only concern with the projects’ implementation. Their attitudes as spending officers meant the state institutions were not ready to relent on the accounting procedures. This made the two state agencies institute cumbersome and stringent accounting measures to follow in accessing the little available funds after the project expiration. More so, the sluggish disbursement of the remaining funds similarly meant the projects could not be accounted for on time, but the wages of the officials were paid with such monies, nonetheless (Barimah, 1993). The NGOs in themselves who were beneficiaries of the programmes could not criticise the processes. This meant most of the projects could not be sustained.

In effect, the PAMSCAD secretariat had borrowed staff from all the five ministries in question. Only a handful of individuals were employed as freelance aid workers whose mandate ended with the project expiration. The absence of permanent staff to check the progress of these projects meant the upmost disregard for accountability, ownership, continuity, and institutional memory. In other instances, enormous amount of money was often given to end-up some programmes in the shortest possible time. This led to bogus procurement of logistics, disbursement, and quick disposal of project equipment often to be acquired by known persons to the originations. In the case of the CMP, a community evaluation organised in 12 selected communities in the Brong Ahafo region found the beneficiaries were unhappy about the suspension of the project. They accused the district management team of financial embezzlement and the Centre management committees of food hoarding and misappropriation of project equipment. Other concerns raised were that the programme introduced mothers and children to foreign foods which were not easily available and affordable (Barimah, 1993).

Besides all these challenges, close to 70% of donor funding went into monitoring and evaluation of such projects, making it a lucrative business. For example, with the end of PAMSCAD by the early 1990s, an instigated multi-donor evaluation process including a high-powered delegation from the World Bank and IMF was undertaken. They found that PAMSCAD had not shown substantial support in relation to alleviating ‘the social costs of adjustment’, be it deprivation and poverty or the welfare of the people. It concluded that “nearly 80 per cent of the funds for PAMSCAD went to the non-poor (redeployed public sector workers above the poverty line) while the vast majority (over 90 per cent) of the poor received no benefit at all” (Brydon, 2010; Malena, 1995). Some of these mishaps became the bedrock of most development projects in Ghana through to the 2000s and beyond. The lack of coordination and harmonisation efforts afforded individuals with asymmetric information and moral hazards of aid project implementation.

Development Projects and Funding in Northern Ghana

Ghana’s heavy reliance on donor aid is the result of its debt burden in relation to its uneven infrastructural development. As urban infrastructure and macro-economic stability became the new focus, the five regions of the north became hard hit with state sponsored entrenchment and cut back on peasant agriculture investment. Poverty and inequality became very much deepened. The situation for the ‘north’ got worsened by an earlier colonial marginalisation ploy and poor social amenities. For the international development agencies determination, poverty reduction strategies through increase in agricultural production in Northern Ghana became their new focus. Since the 1980s through to the 2020s, there has been many projects and programmes that stood in marked resemblance to PAMSCAD. By the turn of the millennia, Ghana opted for ‘debt relief’ from the World Bank and IMF under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative (Geddes et al., 2009), another of the socio-economic rescue policies. Donors’ interests and participation in these policies this time round were tied to poverty-reduction strategies. Ghana used the economic hardship of the country and not too surprisingly, the poverty conditions of the five northern regions as a catapult to launch the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) paper.

This in effect increased Ghana’s reliance on donor aid as its policies, projects, and programmes were now sector-aligned and managed with the tactics of ‘reigning-in more aid’. The incentive was to go along with ‘donor-initiated’ projects that had financial support. Donors, however, adopted a wide range of modalities and instruments for their untied aids. The disbursement of some of these aid modalities showed that over 40% of bilateral official development assistance (ODA) was directed through programmatic instruments (Geddes et al., 2009; OECD, 1996). Many bilateral projects were by this time visible in the five northern regions of Ghana as concerns over poverty has ebbed in the south but remained a leading public issue for the north.

The periods of “Make poverty History”, MDGs, and SDGs also saw the increased and renewed commitment of official aid agencies who opened country offices and augmented their specialist development operators and logistics on the fields (Aryeetey et al., 2005; Dicks et al., 2023). This was because majority of the untied aids were arranged under bilateral agreements and spearheaded by the donor country’s development agencies as most of these aids were disbursed through project approach. Projects like the village infrastructure projects (VIPs), a $60 million investment had laudable ideas but have all fizzled out with no tangible success stories to point to, while new ones keep coming after every ‘monitoring and evaluation’ process (Porter & Lyon, 2006). In the case of Ghana, Tamale, the capital of Northern Region became host to many of these agencies as head offices and guest houses sprang up. By 2001 with an aid-dependent central budget, coupled with a decentralised donor-aid-default-programmes, focus was now moving to the rural communities of countries that applied for the debt relief.

A review of ODA based on the donors’ credit reporting data found that Ghana was receiving 75% untied aid and 11% partially untied. Another 11% tied aid and a further 3% of aid was not reported, during 2005–7 (Geddes et al., 2009). The rest of aid spent was through ‘a project approach’, and as emergency reliefs present in rural communities. With Ghana poverty reduction strategies accommodating all forms of aid, attention was given to poverty-focused NGOs that worked in the northern part of Ghana by both donors and the government. These third sector players became the unaccustomed drivers of community development. Their programmes and advocacy received both attention and aid (Mansuri & Rao, 2004). The 1990s and 2000s also saw the growth of media influence through think tanks and NGOs who voiced their criticisms on government policies related to poverty and welfare. The international NGOs nevertheless became the moral guards to micro-sector investments and social justice in the five northern regions of Ghana (Banks & Hulme, 2012). Many official vehicles of donor aiders, social influencers and aid branded paraphernalia became the norm for these rural communities (Krause, 2014; Wiemers, 2021). As a result, the donors were left to effectively implement their own agendas through projects and coordinate their country’s development assistance.

This created an enabling environment for the educated and political elites including civil servants to indulge in donor sponsored projects. These made state officials fixated on doing whatever donors wanted, to access the funds. Politically motivated public spending, and the lack of strategic development plan to transform the rural economy, led to ‘rural needs assessment’ by the various non-governmental agencies working in the northern part of Ghana. Several multilateral and bilateral projects were seen running concurrently in these regions based on these needs assessment. By the 2000s, the following projects funded by different agencies were present in the five northern regions. They included CIDA-funded Northern Water and Sanitation project (NORWASP); CIDA in collaboration with IFAD in food security. DANIDA capacity Building program, World Bank (IDA) funded community water and sanitation projects; UNICEF supported community-based programmes. JICA funded integrated human/water resources development project and the DFID budget support projects (2001–2005)¹ just to mention but a few.²

The presence of numerous projects running concurrently meant the lack of coordination amongst donor partners and the local stakeholders involved. This at a point prompted the organisation of the “first annual general meeting of members of ‘Northern Ghana Network for Development’ (The network). This group with the membership of 76 NGOs at the time, had sponsorship from donors in the regions to help coordinate their activities (Bank, 2011). The mandate for these group meetings was practically impossible as the country-specific requirements and timelines for the different donor projects expiration was difficult to harmonise. The community stakeholders and beneficiaries were the hardest hit. The demand for their involvement in various donor projects made them ineffective. Linking the donor resources and aligning them with the partner (beneficiary) assessment frameworks was non-existent as they were so many, and the donor-country-specific-interest dictated the performance indicators sorted.

For instance, there were ample disparities in donor practices with the UK, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, and France as well as World Bank/IMF and European Commission (EC), firmly advocating for programmatic agreements (Aryeetey et al., 2005). Other donor countries such as Japan and the USA prefer to establish project-related activities or just as well create new parallel project-type arrangements (Geddes et al., 2009; Sinyangwe, 2020). This also meant refraining the donor country from requesting the performance indicators that were consistent with their host country development strategies. These processes ostensibly were out of line and tune with the Paris Declaration for aid harmonisation.

Duplication was at its peak as different projects had different timelines and outcomes. For instance, in the provision of water and sanitation, different water projects were instituted as northern Ghana has been bedevilled with water and sanitation over the years. The National Community Water and Sanitation Agency (NCWSA) since its inception in 1994 has coordinated over 10 different water programmes in several communities in the five northern regions. They included the community water and sanitation project (CWSP), the Ghana water and sewerage corporation (GWSC) assisted project named (GAP1), the northern region water and sanitation project (NORWASP) and other bilateral donor projects between 1995 and 2020.³ Running concurrently with this was other partnered water projects, like the Government of Ghana (GoG) 60 and 100 Borehole Water Projects. The GWSC (GAP 2) was incorporated into CWSP1 after 3 years of operation. The NORWASP 1 was upgraded to NORWASP 2 with an EU-assisted Rural Water and Sanitation Project (RWSP) and International Water, Sanitation and Hygiene projects (I WASH) between 2006 and 2012.⁴ All these water projects had different donor sponsorships at a point in time.

Water Aid Ghana, since its establishment in 1985 has lobbied and implemented many water projects in collaboration with 10 local NGOs and global partners within the five northern regions of Ghana.⁵ The United States through its development agencies USAID have also instituted and sponsored Water, Sanitation and Hygiene projects in the same northern regions.⁶ The competing interests of countless NGOs in water management had occasioned the several water projects to be named and repackaged. Some of these water projects include the Mole Conference, the Tripartite Partnership Projects, the WAWASH, Triple-S Ghana, WASH-Tech Ghana, WASHCost, and others.⁷

Most of these water agencies and partnered projects have not been sustained as the need and demand for water are still a challenge in many rural and peri-urban communities of Northern Ghana. The evidence of the continuous and the repetitive demand for water aid, for example, creates aid coordination weaknesses, which in turn exerts more pressure on the beneficiaries of such projects. It is interesting to note that several beneficiary communities have had multiple donor water projects at the same time. Most consultative meetings and stake-holder engagements on water projects meant same communities were involved but on different projects and programmes. This also meant development aiders were competing for the attention of similar or same beneficiaries. As working for NGOs in donor project interventions in northern Ghana became fashionable, the numerous projects and donor presence equally signalled some beneficiaries to act poor.

Project Portfolios and Beneficiaries

By 2005, more than ten bilateral donor aid agencies and internationally acclaimed NGOs had substantial aid projects concentrated mostly in the Northern parts of Ghana. (Canada and CIDA, Denmark and DANIDA, United Kingdom and DFID, United States and USAID, Sweden and SIDA, Japan and JICA, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands) all had more than two projects somewhere in the researched region (Gary, 1996; Kwao & Amoak, 2022). The age-old scramble for Africa has now become more localised through the activities of donor countries’ development agencies with projects, all spotted in rural communities of Northern Ghana. The struggle for control of these rural space with donor projects through pushing substantial amount of funds in the name of development aid had reached a crescendo, as new donor billboards replace old, expired, and rotten ones most times at the same spot.

The race to poverty and vulnerability reduction within these rural communities, nonetheless, included multilateral organisations like the United Nations and their various agencies on children, labour, agriculture, and development. The IMF and World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the European Commission all had projects or programmes lined up somewhere within northern Ghana independently. According to Aryeetey et al, (2005), an estimated 70% of aid support through donor partner envelope (DPE) was managed by the international NGOs through their project approach. The disbursement by donors had their country development organisations and some international partnered agencies leading the charge in project execution. The rest of donor funds meant for community projects and advocacy were micro-managed through these donor agencies and other ‘self-accredited’ international NGOs who subcontracted community-based organisations (CBOs) (Arhin et al., 2018). A sizable number of communities saw the multiplicity of donor branded vehicles cruising the length and breadth of their communities, and they became the hot spot for all forms and types of NGO activities.

The engagement of NGOs and their beneficiary communities through practices like community profiling and immersion often reckons the community as worthy stakeholders of donor projects. Such engagements are not taken lightly as focal persons with multiple experiences attend and co-opt new members. For rural communities in the five northern regions of Ghana, working for any aid agency (INGOs) is a lucrative business and the show of wealth is seen in their working conditions and the types of vehicles used for these projects. More so, the presence of an NGO in a community implies the aura of donor capital, windfall of aid and a solution to all the community’s problems. The consequence of these donor and beneficiary engagements wholistically produces a chaotic picture of numerous processes of project funding and executions within multiple communities at the same time.

Most beneficiaries are accustomed to the many other bilateral-community development projects dotted all over the five northern regions for the past four decades and counting. The continuous presence of these projects and their ‘half-headedness’ in nature have compelled these regions to become aid dependent in terms of their growth and development. For some communities, donor aid was helping, whiles for others, the limited, selective development projects and their repetitive nature were producing beneficiary stress. The global imagery portrayed was that donor aid and development were reaching the people, while in fact poverty and inequality were still the hall mark of the region. The resultant effects are some signs of aid dependency syndromes exhibited by beneficiaries.

Methodology

This empirical research was to set up facts on how fragmentation of donor efforts had influenced participatory behaviours of the beneficiary communities of northern Ghana. We deployed a mixed method approach, under-pinned by the philosophy and procedure of ‘an adapted’ grounded theory practice (Chun Tie et al., 2019). The process of community profiling guided our data generation processes simultaneously as we engaged key stake holders and informants on evidence of aid activities through community resource mapping. The initial coding process helped identified theme categorisations like “multiple aid projects” and “concentration of NGOs/NPOs activities” through awareness of aid activities. This shaped the research design to use systematic literature review in the choice and the data generated for the analytical processes as affirmed by (Guetterman et al., 2019; Seaman, 2008). For the explanatory underpinning to support the core categorisation of the identified themes of aid (performance), we concurrently deployed survey instruments which included close-ended questions centred on a list of twenty-two desired outcomes. It appraised key sectors of NGOs/NPOs’ services delivery as 500 respondents were chosen purposively to include adult males, females, youth, opinion leaders and beneficiaries of any form of aid. For an inundation of the theoretical samplings of the conjectured themes and for inherent data saturation, we augmented our research with evidence from focus group discussions organised during the study. People in the communities gave variety of factual materials based on first-hand experiences, life stories, personal reactions, and introspective observations which engulf the theoretical sensitivity and fine-tuning the conjuncture into hypothesis. The constant comparative analysis process afforded the conduction of interviews with former aid workers and current aid implementers through snowball sampling successively. Some information from the former aid workers was verified through logical reviews of project reports and journals found within the research regions. For the validation and triangulation of the ensuing phenomenon, we conducted interviews with development experts to firm up the storyline.

To conceptualise an explanatory theory inductively, this research investigated the ‘said’ role play of development aid. With beneficiary communities as recipient of aid in reducing poverty, the research focused on the presence and growth or otherwise of an ‘aid dependency phenomenon’ at the micro-level. Based on the research underpinning of Denzin (2017), our process began with concepts of abstraction, and it encompassed moral judgement. It proceeded to shaped ethical action in both the subject and object for ultimate outcomes in and for the community’s development (Denzin, 2017). Thus, we evaluated the effectiveness of aid from the community perspective with further investigation as to whether this was caused by the disaggregation of development aid efforts within the regions. We situated the findings within the development aid agendas in reducing poverty and measured its progress from the perspective of the beneficiary.

Project Fragmentation and Aid Dependency; (The Phenomenon of Poverty Dance)

For the records, the financial data and audit reports on aid agencies overall spending pattern are unjustifiably poor. Donor and development aid efforts are arguably fragmented by many factors and along different dimensions. As small NGOs split their efforts amongst different communities and sector needs, so does the donor countries. Their budgeted funds for development projects are shared amongst different recipient countries based on their many different sectors and the vulnerabilities present. The urgency of relief sort during disasters also distorts the donor–recipient coordination, collaboration, and planning efforts. These types of fragmentation produce poor management of donor funds linked with aid inefficiencies. It is often associated with high overhead costs for both the recipients and donor countries. Most at times many more challenges surface after evaluation of these projects making the works of donor aid look like ‘work in progress’.

Same way, other development aid practices in the host country such as giving money to bureaucratic officials to ‘pave way’ for negotiation and project acceptance, to local chiefs and some beneficiaries through processes of ‘community immersion’ are contributing factors to aid ineffectiveness. Much of these aid activities and projects also drives government officials into giving up the prospects to scale up on successes gained from their participation in such interventions. They needlessly continue to encourage new projects into the same community as they most often are not aware of the source, volume, and duration of some of these projects. Given that these government officials could be changed at any time, there is the loss in information and institutional memory with some projects. Other interventions are such that, the national official, mediate for the project to go to communities that have needs assessment based on the information gathered. But less of that information is passed on to the district implementing the projects. This affirms the concerns of some districts officials who claim they do not know the full scale of some of the projects implemented in their communities.

The proliferation of many small NGOs and CBOs playing crucial role in the community development effort is nearly underestimated. So is the case of many bilateral and multilateral donors in collaboration with these NGOs in Ghana. Many of these International development aid agencies have more than one agency giving aid in the country. The multiplicity of their activities is clear in a host of sectors and communities found in the research regions. For instance, the United States through USAID has direct projects in some communities in the north, while World Vision International, also a US-based organisation, has same or similar projects. Then comes charities and foundations like the Ford Foundation, Winrock International, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, all managing different projects in Ghana.

Of particular interest to this study is the activities of the INGO Winrock International. In implementing the ‘Feed the Future’ (FtF) programme of USAID, the Ghana Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (AgNRM) project was designed in collaboration by Winrock International to reduce poverty in the five northern regions of Ghana. So, in partnership with other local-based NGOs and CBOs, Winrock International advertised and called for proposals in implementing seven different projects. The diverse schemes introduced often require NGOs and CBOs with track records of managing USAID projects or American led missions. This is because the matrices of evaluating achievement must be the donor justified successes.⁸ These collaborating projects are not done in isolation, as the competing NGOs are usually engaged in other USAID projects. Their track record of one successful project implementation enhances their chances with other USA country projects, procedures and funding. These many projects running concurrently and in phases usually involve sometimes the same government officials as mediators and same beneficiaries. The cooperation of the organisers and their recipients also means continuity and progress as well as fatigue and complacency in project management for efficiency.

Many other donor nations have parts of their foreign aid budgets executed by several other organisations whose main purpose is not aid-giving but aid implementation. For instance, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) kept full approval over all matters about the Government of Canada’s contribution to development in the recipient countries through many of these third sector players. With the implementation of the district capacity project to strengthen the local assemblies with budget support, for instance, an implementing agency was contracted in collaboration with other donors executing similar projects. The CIDA project team leader based in Ottawa was made responsible for the decision making of the DISCAP project and any other ‘related business of interest’ to the government of Canada in Ghana. The field representative, based in Accra for this case, managed cooperation with the government of Ghana and the Canadian executing agency (CEA) team leader.⁹

This was to ease progress towards the expected results from the projects with subsequent monitoring and evaluation processes. Thus, the implementation of the DISCAP was to be closely coordinated with activities of other projects and programmes being initiated in local governance, and capacity building found in northern Ghana. According to the operation report, “every effort must be made to maintain an open communication and information sharing” with other projects. This was to avoid duplication. Special reference was then made regarding the following projects which were running concurrently in the three northern and the Brong Ahafo regions. They included CIDA-funded northern region water and sanitation project NORWASP between 1999 and 2006,¹⁰ being implemented in the eastern corridor section of the northern region. CIDA and IFAD collaboration in preparing and implementing food security programmes in the northern regions (1998–2001).¹¹ Another was the DANIDA-funded District Assembly Capacity Building Project in the Upper West Region (1999–2003).¹² Then came World Bank (IDA) funded Community Water and Sanitation Project II (1994–2000), being undertaken in the Upper East and Upper West regions. The EU and Cassie Française de Development (CFD) sponsored projects in water and sanitation in the Northern Region was between 2002 and 2005.¹³ Followed by UNICEF supported community-based development programme (1999–2002) in six districts of the northern and Upper East regions. JICA-funded integrated human/water resource development project (2001–2003)¹⁴ had beneficiaries from the Upper East and West regions. Then came DFID-funded Brong-Ahafo District Support Project (2001–2005).¹⁵

The DISCAP director was made to categorically seek coordination of all these activities and share ongoing learning suggestions with many other projects found in the regions. The observed consequence of these types of fragmentation is that each beneficiary community must in fact cope with the many small projects and programmes from the many different donors’ sources at most times. This unintended duplication of donors’ projects in turn creates beneficiary stress amongst aid recipients. The beneficiary stress involves taking part in on-going projects, while new and multiple, different donor projects are introduced to them. This in turn feeds into the aid dependency tendencies, where most of these beneficiaries are indoctrinated to think more aid would come their way, as a way of life. With many years of direct and indirect ‘associated work experiences with aid related interventions’ and the continuous presence of donor aids through NGOs activities, many of these recipients of aid are hopeful of new and better forms of aid. They thus ‘so act and remain poor’ hence “the phenomenon of poverty dance”. We define poverty dance as the presage of beneficiaries of some poverty laden communities to anticipate the windfall of aid by the rendition of homogenised dramatic art of dearth. Most of these beneficiaries are always living in constant anticipation of aid handouts. They so act and believe their livelihoods must be such that aid implementers and donors would always find them in need of donations.

Conclusion and Reflection

The choice of investigating fragmentation of projects and the symbolism of donor aid in northern Ghana is due to the decision that existing studies do not give a vivid understanding of what the actual causes of aid ineffectiveness from the community perspective are. More so, not much is known about the actions that could be undertaken by aid managers during the implementation and sustainability phases of project to reduce poverty in this researched region. Hence, this research explored how micro-level aid implementation biases with different development projects have contributed to micro-level growth in some sectors and its stagnation and beneficiary reliance on aid in the five regions of northern Ghana.

The evidence gathered showed a great deal of aid ineffectiveness through what we called the twin-trends of aid dependency syndrome (the red herring of aid implementation and poverty dance of beneficiaries) . The ‘poverty dance of beneficiary communities’ is the show and act of being poor to receiving donor handouts. Using the adapted grounded theory technique with critical and systematic discourse analysis, this research concludes on the agreement that commitment is paramount to the operations of development aid in relation to poverty reduction at the community level. As the third sector players continuously advocate for greater accountability and openness to all beneficiaries of donor funds, host government to development aid must have strategic plans that reduce poverty within their beneficiary communities. This consensus is equally upholding, as donor countries must coordinate their activities as several donor funds concentrated in selected countries, regions or sectors should be avoided but synchronised and made to complement each other. Same beneficiaries used for multiple programmes and projects concentrated in fewer communities should be averted.

Furthermore, the concept of underdevelopment and the assessment of poverty in developing economies usually include a constellation of humanitarian challenges and emergencies. It is often not clear, which specific problems donor funding is intended to address in rural communities of the aid recipient. This is because many aid implementers are into development aid management and poverty financing for the long haul, with calls for ‘sustainability’. Thus, the recipient government should have a national development policy focused on targeted infrastructural needs in rural communities. This would assist donors direct their funds towards these infrastructural needs and access them as specific projects. Donors coming in would access information on which projects have been signed by other funders, the implementing NGOs and their duration. It would unenviably involve the interest of the donor and approved priorities of the recipient countries with the intending beneficiaries being uplifted from poverty. The results would be measurable, and the central coordination would reduce duplication of projects. Other processes of participatory development could be to target economic investment opportunities for beneficiaries, with expected return from these investments making them economically independent. This then makes the third sector players ‘watchdog’ to development.