 Yeah, thanks. It's a pleasure to be here. Well, I note from the robust and distinguished Agenda today that there was a lot of attention focused on Foreign aid and I'm sure on Western donors as was highlighted in our previous speaker So there's probably a lot of fervor in the room, you know Pointy fingers at those Western donors at everything that they've done. So I take full responsibility No, it's a pleasure to be here As as was said in the introduction, I I'm a Development practitioner. I work for the US Agency for International Development I've been in development work for about 20 years somewhere along the way I did get a master's degree, but I won't claim to have the level of knowledge and and sort of academic excellence of some of the professors that are in the room But I can tell you and what I'm prepared to tell you about is is some of the practicalities of what USA does here Why why do we do it and what our focus our orientation our programming in democracy and governance is all about? And then I'm happy to answer some questions at the end Just in general USA and Ghana have an over 50 years collaborative partnership Ghana is currently a very important country for the United States Administration and for USA. It's a strategic partner. It's one of two countries on the African continent That we've designated as Africa focus countries, which means that we are Concentrating a number of initiatives and programmatic efforts to support both Ghana and Tanzania, which is the other country There are multiple US government initiatives. Some of them are Presidential initiatives from the Obama administration. Some of them are USA initiatives, which are Concentrating on Ghana including the partnership for growth Which is a collaborative arrangement between the two governments USAid forward is a set of initiatives Which describes how we are reforming our business practices and procurement reform and I'll say something about that in a minute And then there's a number of different initiatives feed the future global health Malaria HIV AIDS prevention global climate change and some others and so for us As staff members of USA Ghana, we find it to be a very busy place to work because there is a lot of activity and And even though I'm highlighting things that are the orientation and interest of the United States government It is very much the the cornerstone the foundation of our work that we are working in partnership with the government of Ghana and the people of Ghana and that our activities are consistent with the Ghana shared growth and development agenda What do we do here with USA Ghana we work in four areas or for development sectors Economic growth which includes agriculture and we have a very large program both ongoing and upcoming Supporting commercial agricultural development particularly in the north of Ghana We have a very large health program. That's working in some of the areas. I already mentioned malaria HIV AIDS maternal child health We have an education program Particularly focused because USA made a decision some years ago to really concentrate our efforts on primary school education and primary Literacy because that scene is really the springboard for the success of children in their learning throughout their lives and democracy and governance Which I am the manager of and I'll spend much more time talking about Collectively USA's assistance to Ghana is in the range of about a hundred million US dollars per year And we are working on on the we work on the basis of five-year strategies and five-year agreements with the government of Ghana We are right now in the process of developing a new strategy And we are having a lot of consultations with government partners NGO partners donor donors that we work with But to give you a sense and we've had a lot of debate about What's our position, you know, and I think in the context of what you've been talking about today We have internally been facing what is the most effective role of our assistance How far has Ghana come and is coming along and and where do we provide inputs that will be meaningful and Basically the spirit of what we are looking at in the new strategy and I'll give you a hint with our our goal statement Is facilitating Ghana's transition to an aid dependency free future? so it's in our it's in our Analysis and our understanding that Ghana is very rapidly coming to a position where it is fully self-reliant in its own development and in the management of a number of these social sectors and other areas Different donor a number of the donors here From different European countries from from Japan from different areas have a similar mentality And people are having some debates about well What is the point really where donors have worked themselves out of a job and and it is entirely an Aid dependency free environment and people are differing on whether that's a five year or a 10 year or a 20 year Horizon I think for us in USA. We're not making any kind of proclamation about that But we think that we're trying to set the conditions in this five-year period so that perhaps in the next strategy period It's very likely that you know USA might look at transitioning Another important thing to note that under the USAID forward, which is a global initiative for us We are making serious efforts at what we call international procurement reform and USAID Does its business and historically does its business by providing funds to contractors and grantees? Which are often Internet you could be us our international firms other NGOs international NGOs and and host country NGOs and That has sometimes that Modality has sometimes removed some of the ownership and leadership from the host country partners and so we are making concerted efforts to Build direct funding relationships with our host country partners including government of Ghana institutions So it's we're entering a new day of how we work directly with government of Ghana institutions as well as Ghanaian NGOs and CSO civil society organizations So this spirit of procurement reform is informing a lot of how we do our activities and we plan for new activities Within the democracy and governance portfolio that I manage our focus over the next strategic period we've set our development objective as strengthening democratic governance and and our spirit in that is both is Working along with the government and the people of Ghana both in the supply side of governance So the everyday work that that local government regional government national government officials are doing strengthening capacity supporting training providing assistance To improve the quality of the supply of governance, which is provided by the government and then also working on The demand side of government and that's when you know people are communicating citizens are communicating to their government These are the services that I want and that I expect. This is the quality of services. This is the transparent information that I would like from my government officials so those things in In in my mind they come together in what we're describing as democratic governance But addressing both the the push in the pole the supply and the demand Are our focus and we're working in three areas within democracy and governance and and those areas were identified both through a National level democracy and governance assessment which we conducted in 2011 and through a lot of consultation and a lot of listening to our governmental partners But the three areas that that we are working in particularly is local governance strengthening civil society and election systems So local governance strengthening civil society support and and election since Systems strengthening to say a little bit more on that Of course Ghana on the local governance side, of course Ghana is going through Decentralization process that is you know political fiscal administrative and it's moving at different different paces and at different levels there are political reforms that and even possibly a You know a referendum that would be required to move some aspects of the political decentralization Meanwhile other aspects of administrative administrative are moving forward and fiscal as well But for us that we've seen while a number of donors are supporting different aspects of the decentralization process We at USAID feel it's very important to provide some further strengthening support to the MMDAs the Metropolitan Municipal District Assemblies and particularly the District Assemblies We've had an ongoing program in Western region that's working with District Assemblies to help their planning capability and To help them manage and increase their internally generated funds And also to help them in how they engage with their the citizens that they represent We're also This is a this program is goes by the acronym logo depth or local governance and decentralization program They've been doing a lot of things on street naming a house numbering you may have heard some of that in the news recently we're looking forward to Some new a new decentralization program That may have much more public accountability And auditing components in there And also we you know something with our new governance program is that we really want to when we do it this time We're going to pair the programmatic intervention with a impact evaluation that tests a few different Select methods of intervention and really tries to determine from a scientific perspective Which one of these methods had the greatest impact in leading to? improvements in governance and you know improvements in satisfaction of the citizenry and their government so USAID is also Working to become a more technically sound scientifically based development agency Within civil society, we're working broadly to support civil society Organizations in Ghana and particularly how they engage with the government to demand Responsive transparent and accountable services Because we also believe in donor harmonization and the principles of aid effectiveness as As reflected in the Paris Declaration and the Accra gender for action We decided that we would work with a number of other donors Under what's called the star Ghana mechanism so strengthening transparency accountability and responsiveness in Ghana Star Ghana includes Four if not five other donors the UK Danita European Union us I know the Canadians we're looking at but I'm not sure if they're going to come on board And we have contributed money into a common pool And then that pool provides funding according to thematic waves to Ghana and CSOs Particularly one you know one area particular note has been the oil and gas sector communicating Communities interests, you know in what should happen with some of the development Assistance corporate social responsibility and you know other outcomes from oil and gas development The third area election systems USAID has supported elections related activities since in the 2000 2004 2008 and now This time and I met you know I mentioned a few minutes ago about how USAID has sometimes worked through international contractors and international partners In our assessment of what we would support this year We made a determination that absolutely we could work directly with Ghanaian institutions and that's what we decided to do And we have we have a long relationship working with CDD Center for Democratic Development And and we determined that they were best placed To manage our funding this time and so we we do have about a 1.2 million grant With CDD to support elect electoral monitoring and observation and that's linked of course CDD linked with Codeo And we're also working directly with the Electoral Commission supporting Excuse me supporting some of their efforts towards public information and we also It's it's a bit of a work in process But we're very interested in in helping the Elector Electoral Commission achieve their vision Of being a thought leader and a trainer for election officials and civil society throughout West Africa in the Africa continent and they're they're working to stand up the Kumasi training center Which you know as sort of a center of excellence in election practices And so we along with the european union and some others are supporting that Um in the future. I have a sense that Funding some of the practical day-to-day elements of election processes even including observation May not really be necessary to be supported by international donors. I mean certainly The capacity and knowledge exists within CDD within many of the other organizations within the GEC And it may be likely that we might concentrate our efforts more on Really addressing Specific targeted issues like for example possibly the the role and participation of women in the election process Ensuring that political parties are incorporating issues that are of concern to women in their platforms that Women who wish to run Who wish to be candidates are supported and have the opportunity So so we may focus much more narrowly in in the future just with technical assistance Rather than sort of a a foreign aid provision role Um I guess I just uh that's that's pretty much what I wanted to present and then you know We could go to question to answer but I I did I did want to comment, you know, just real quickly on a little One of the things from the professor You know that represents a challenge of foreign aid and I think is Is that you you can face a question of uh, where is where is the focus in foreign assistance? And and do you want to provide funding in a way that helps set the conditions? For Ghana's own development or do you sometimes want to fund the work because sometimes a number of our organizations or institutions Want us to just fund the work And it can be be a dilemma because Uh, if you say if you want the work of 6,000 Codeo Elections observers getting out there that is a costly endeavor and so You know, so sometimes we just look at both sides We can we can be helpful in providing funding to do in the work and then and there's other times We're really we think that we should be working on a policy issue or something that is creating an enabling environment for that to move forward I also want to just say in elections that I I personally believe and it's a perspective of our office that Transparency and accountability in the elections process is is absolutely absolutely important Um And that we're working with our partners, you know to uh to conduct themselves in such a way and to carry out their work You know that will demonstrate the highest degree of transparency in a public accountability And and with that I'm open to any questions. So thank you very much