EU DEVELOPMENT POLICY FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES VS. THE NEW SECURITY AGENDA : A CASE STUDY ON GHANA

Abstract: Development issues have been the centre of most international governmental organisations for quite a long time. Most developing countries tend to depend on Western foreign donors to assist them in their developmental ambitions. Ghana as a developing nation also depends on it foreign donors to finance most of it developmental projects. Even though the European Union is an international governmental organisation that is much known for assisting developing countries with their developmental projects it is anticipated that recent occurrence such as the global economic meltdown, climate change coupled with terrorist attacks on most developed nations will limit or perhaps even halt the flow of development aid to developing countries as they might be more concerned with securing their territory rather than thinking of other people somewhere else.This is because such occurrences have resulted in raising a new concern, thus the New Security Agenda or Human Security. The Human Security in respect to its economic sector is what this paper deals with. This paper takes a critical look on Ghana’s Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (GPRS), as pertaining to the aspect of these papers that received developmental aid from the European Development Fund (EDF). It is proved here that almost all aspect of Ghana’s developmental projects in one way or other received funding from the EDF. The New Security Agenda in terms of its economic sector was rather found out to be a positive influence for developing nations like Ghana as a result of the country’s stability. This is because it was found out that rather than limiting the flow of development aid to Ghana, it is during this time that the 10th EDF budget for Ghana received the highest funding. It was later found out that all these developmental projects conforms to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which is also an area of concern in the New Security Agenda. All this occurrences are much more explained along a theoretical framework (thus the notions of liberalism, critical theory and constructivism). However other academic works on the subject matter was also comprehensively acknowledged.