United Nations in Ghana holds Joint Workplan Consultations with Government Partners

The United Nations in Ghana in partnership with two key government partners – the Ministry of Planning and the Ministry of Finance – has organized the UN-Government of Ghana Joint Programming Consultations with over 150 participants representing about 80 public sector partnering institutions. The meeting is part of a process of operationalizing its 5-year development framework known as the UN Sustainable Development Partnership (2018-2022).

Following the development and signing of the UNSDP in June 2018, the UN in Ghana for the first time developed a joint workplan involving several UN agencies and government partners.  The workplan centers on its support to the government of Ghana; and the meeting sought to provide a platform to discuss priority areas for 2010 and strengthen alignment between UN and Government development priorities.

Opening the meeting, the Minister for Planning, Prof. George Gyan-Baffour asked the UN to continue playing its catalytic role in supporting the national development agenda. He called on the various Ministries, Departments and Agencies to work closely with the UN to “accelerate our actions to realise the shared vision on the UNSDP in Ghana”.

For his part, the Minister of Finance, Hon. Ken Ofori-Atta welcomed the UN for becoming strategic in areas of focus through the organization of such consultations. He said the UN should utilize its knowledge and lessons learnt from project implementations to strengthen policy development in the country. Hon. Ofori-Atta also touched on the need for the UN to decentralize its structures to give country offices more authority to ensure better progress implementation of country programmes.

The Acting UN Resident Coordinator for Ghana, Ms. Sylvia Lopez-Ekra set the tone for discussions and challenged the country team to see the reform as an opportunity to re-position the UN to respond more coherently to national development needs.  She said this new approach of doing things reflects the UN development system’s contributions in the country, driving planning, implementation, monitoring, reporting and evaluation of collective UN support for achieving the 2030 Agenda.

The Head of UN Unite at the Ministry of Finance, Mrs. Gladys Osabutey provided clarity on the Ministry's expectations of the UN system to work coherently and deliver as One, adding that having one channel of communications for reporting will be beneficial to both the UN and the Government.

Following the opening of this Joint Programming Consultations, participants entered into four groups to critically review and discuss the joint workplan and made some inputs that will guide the UN’s joint work in the coming year. The outcome of this consultations is crucial in driving positive change to achieve development goals in Ghana.

For images, visit the UN in Ghana's Flickr page.