Mr Jonathan Adabre, a policy analyst with Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC), has appealed to the government to set up a sustainable funding system for the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) instead of relying on support from donors.
Mr Adabre, the Regional Manager of ISODEC in charge of Upper East Region, said over reliance on donor funding for implementing SADA would make it a failure.
"Already there is donor fatigue and besides, donors do not give out freely, the high profit they would expect would affect the implementation of SADA," he said.
Mr Adabre was speaking at a day's regional seminar on current developments in SADA organized by Northern Patriot in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA).
He said it was high time the government became committed to addressing the disparity between the north and the south and warned that if this was not done it could trigger conflicts and confusion in future.
He said researchers had warned that Ghana would join the league of conflict-prone countries in the near future if the trend of socio-economic and political inequalities were not reversed.
Whilst commending the NDC government for initiating SADA, Mr Adabre called on the government to stop playing politics with the implementation and rather design a system to generate sustainable funding.
Mr Adabre said the seed capital of 200 million Ghana cedis promised by the government had not been provided.
He said instead 25 million Ghana cedis was announced in 2010 as seed capital for the setting up of SADA from multilateral Debt Relief Initiative budget.
Mr Adabre said there had not been any explanation from the government as to what it intended to do to make up for the 175 million Ghana cedis deficit.
He said in the 2011 budget, another 25 million Ghana cedis had been allocated for SADA programmes instead of 100 million Ghana cedis that was supposed to be used for these programmes every year as promised by the government in addition to the seed capital of 200 million Ghana Cedis.
"What it means is that out of the 300 million Ghana cedis that should have been allocated to SADA for the past two years, only 50 million Ghana cedis is claimed to have actually been made available to SADA", he said.
Mr. Bismark Ayorogo, the President of NORPRA, expressed worry about the failure of past governments to address the gap between the north and the south.