The African Development Bank has charged graduates from its Public Finance Management Academy for Africa to serve as standard-bearers for embedding accountability across Africa.
In a release, the bank’s Chief Economist and Vice President, Kevin Urama, stated this in Abuja during the graduation ceremony for 51 public officials from 26 countries.
He called on African countries to come together to mobilise and effectively manage the resources needed to increase productivity and create wealth “in Africa for Africans”.
He noted that the participants underwent 18 months of rigourous training to complete the Public Finance Management Executive Training Series on the public finance management cycle and ecosystem.
According to Urama, the training’s six modules comprised domestic resource mobilisation; macro-fiscal modelling and forecasting; public budgeting and expenditure management; debt management and transparency; Public-Private Partnerships in PFM; and accountability, transparency, curbing corruption, and illicit financial flows.
“The graduates now meet the requirements to be certified by the bank group and its partners as public finance management experts in their countries.
“The PFMA works to strengthen African countries’ capacity in economic governance and knowledge management to enhance wealth creation and prudent management of public finances to improve the quality of life of Africans,” the release stated.
Speaking, the Special Adviser to the Vice President of Nigeria on Economic Matters, Mr Tope Fasua, commended the Public Finance Management Academy for Africa for providing a platform for pooling knowledge from relevant institutions and making it available to African public financial management officials.
“I find this very innovative in capacity development and should be extended to other areas of capacity development needs in our governments beyond public financial management,” added Fasua.
In his remarks, AfDB’s Vice President, said, “Currently, African countries lose nearly $90bn a year to illicit financial flows, and much more to illicit resource flows and theft, poorly implemented fiscal incentives, and excessive reliance on commodity exports for foreign exchange earnings.
“These expose countries to highly volatile global market prices and highly vulnerable supply chains. This situation is unacceptable.”
He added that poor practices include ineffective mobilisation and use of domestic revenues for unsustainable borrowing and lack of prudence in the use of borrowed funds.
On his part, Isaac Kurasha of the South African National Treasury, a graduate of the programme, said, the programme had enriched his knowledge of the entire public financial management cycle.
“Being in public finance, I am only in one component of the cycle. Before this training, I had a basic understanding of the other components that make up the public finance management cycle. Today I am more knowledgeable,” Kurasha asserted.
An Assistant Director in the Budget Finance Department of the Central Bank of Liberia, Stephen Moore, said, the training had benefited his career progression, leading to a promotion within the 18-month training period.
“The training has been instrumental in refining my skills and providing a comprehensive understanding of the complexities of public financial management. Looking ahead, he expressed optimism about the promising avenues that his enhanced expertise will open in his career,” Moore added.
