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There is an upward momentum from within Africa to transform honorific national academies into organizations that provide a unique service to their governments and to their nations. As part of the CSO community-and given their rigorous processes that culminate in evidence-based advising-academies in Africa are well-positioned to explore the topic of aid effectiveness in sub-Saharan Africa's health sector.
On 14-16 November 2011, the Uganda National Academy of Sciences (UNAS) will host the Annual Meeting of the African Academies with support from their development partners, the US National Academies. The meeting will showcase the convening power of academies by bringing together national and international speakers from Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), governments and the donor community to dialogue on such critical issues as:
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The role of CSOs in addressing government and donor concerns in aid and development effectiveness
- Lessons learned as organisations operationalise the Accra Agenda for Action
- Results and accountability as a means to achieving the Paris principles
- Challenges and innovative strategies for improving aid effectiveness
At the official opening of the meeting, participants will be treated to a release event of the academy-led report looking at defining the role of CSOs in managing for results. The report is the work of a UNAS committee made up of 19 international experts (three quarters of whom reside in Africa). This committee met for 2 full days at the Rockefeller Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy to develop the framework for an exploratory field study that uses questionnaires targeting CSOs, African governments, and donor organizations to better define the role of CSOs in aid effectiveness.
The field study, undertaken by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, will test the instruments that will be used in a desk study to be carried out by a South African consultancy firm. This process-developed by the UNAS planning committee is expected to become a gold standard that can be emulated in other African countries and developing nations. Results of the desk study will be released in narrative form at the Annual Meeting which should inform the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness taking place in Busan, South Korea. As past experience has demonstrated, this academy-style narrative will likely influence policy making at the highest level.
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