2.4 Country programme design and implementation and other cross‑cutting issues Finding 15. Programme alignment: The UNDP country programme was well aligned with national priorities and the SDGs and aimed to tackle the limitations in institutional response to the principal social, economic, environmental and political challenges facing Ghana’s overall development. The ToC as originally designed was logical but did not clearly identify the underlying assumptions upon which the ToC and the results framework were built. These could have been used to redesign and recalibrate results and the indicators used to measure them when the context changed. UNDP country programme outcomes emerged directly from the UNSDP results areas which in turn were anchored in the Government of Ghana’s Medium‑Term National Development Policy Framework (MTNDPF 2018‑2021) and Coordinated Programme of Economic and Social Development Policies (CPESDP 2017‑2024). The Common Country Assessment identified four fundamental and interconnected challenges facing the country: (i) addressing persistent vertical and horizontal inequalities (gender, urban‑rural, and north‑south); (ii) low productivity with continued dependence on commodity exports; and (iii) burgeoning youth population which could spur growth but in the absence of quality education and job creation exacerbates social tension; and (iv) environmental degradation and vulnerability to climate change impacts which negatively affect the resilience of Ghana’s economy and society, particularly that of the poorest. In line with UNDP comparative advantages, the CPD aimed to contribute to tackling the first and fourth challenges.121 The CPD outcomes were designed to support the government to tackle acknowledged limitations in the institutional response to these challenges. Designed in 2017, the country programme included ambitious objectives and, as the country programme began implementation, it became clear that some of the results, both outcomes and outputs as well as the indicators that measured them, were severely circumscribed by the unfolding context. As such, they would have benefited from a mid‑term review or an overall outcome review or evaluation. As mentioned, the number of available decentralized evaluations was limited, and the governance outcome had no evaluation of any kind, let alone an outcome evaluation. The original ToC of the country programme, though logical in its conception, did not identify the set of assumptions through which the objectives could be met, and this limited the ability to mitigate risks and promote scaling up of successful results achieved. The CO is recognized by the government and donor stakeholders as bringing new ideas to respond to challenges the government faces, both with policy initiatives and by piloting field level approaches that have worked elsewhere. However, UNDP’s ToC did not provide a means for updating the country programme as the funding context changed and the outbreak of violence occurred. Community level actions have been relatively small scale and of short duration, with limited opportunity to start building capacity at regional and district level. Overall, while Ghana remains a relatively stable and prosperous country within the West Africa region, there were several serious challenges facing the country, many of which were political and governance related, and that became more evident during the course of country programme implementation. The design of the current country programme was completed in 2017 before many important political and economic reforms were undertaken and subsequent external factors eventually impacted the programme. The lack
121
UNDP, ‘Country programme document for Ghana (2018‑2022)’, 2018.
Findings
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