Background

Local governments in Ghana are increasingly adept at engaging citizens in the political process, and women are often under-represented in key positions of the local governments. In efforts to strengthen democracy, USAID's Governing Justly and Democratically program supports enhancing civic participation in democratic processes and ensuring that national and local governments are responsive to the interests of their citizens. Emphasis is placed on building sound decentralization to improve health care and education services and to increase access to economic growth opportunities.

USAID/Ghana Democracy and Governance activities include:

Promoting elections: USAID supported a coalition of local organizations to ensure a strong presence at polling stations nationwide. For the first time, parallel vote tabulation was used in Ghana as a check and balance to official results. This complemented international and domestic election observers' findings.

Strengthening local government and decentralization: USAID focuses on strengthening the capacity of local government to solicit and respond to citizen participation. This includes training local government officials and citizen groups through techniques such as town hall meetings that open government up to the people. The program increases the capacity of local government to generate revenue from local citizens and businesses.

Promoting and supporting anti-corruption reform: USAID supports efforts to strengthen assets declaration among public officers, facilitating the building of public support for new conflict of interest guidelines, and promoting efforts to increase information sharing among accountability institutions.

Promoting and Protecting the Rights of People with Disabilities: USAID is building the capacity of local people with disability organizations to: participate in the political process; protect their rights and encourage their inclusion in national development. USAID is also supporting the implementation of the Disabilities Act, which was passed by the Ghana Parliament in 2006. Under a sports diplomacy program, USAID will provide sports wheelchairs for the national basketball team.

Key achievements in 2008 include:

• Local governments organized over 800 community fora ranging from town hall meetings to municipal negotiations on resource mobilization, budget processes, ethics and accountability, and citizen participation in governance. These fora enhanced local government engagement and accountability to citizens.
  
  
• Consultations between local governments and citizen groups resulted in all the 25 targeted districts increasing their revenue through fees, licenses and rates.
  
  
• Twenty of the 25 targeted local governments developed and implemented performance improvement plans with their citizens, resulting in increased citizen participation in local governance.
  
  
• In rural communities, over 60 percent of beneficiaries of local government and decentralized training were women, and at the district level, 24 percent of trainees were women.
  
  
• The deployment of election observers during the 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana provided an additional source of information for reporting on election-day activities, and reassured the public that independent groups were tracking polling station results.
  
  
• For the first time, Ghana used the parallel vote tabulation (PVT) during the 2008 parliamentary and presidential elections with USAID support. The PVT served as a check and balance to official electoral results and provided yet another layer of transparency for the political parties and the electorate.