Capacity Building in Africa


Book Description

African countries need to improve the performance of their public sectors if they are going to achieve their goals of growth, poverty reduction, and the provision of better services for their citizens. Between 1995 and 2004, the Bank provided some $9 billion in lending and close to $900 million in grants and administrative budget to support public sector capacity building in Africa. This evaluation assesses Bank support for public sector capacity building in Africa over these past 10 years. It is based on six country studies, assessments of country strategies and operations across the Region, and review of the work of the World Bank Institute, the Institutional Development Fund, and the Bank-supported African Capacity Building Foundation.




DAC Guidelines and Reference Series Harmonising Donor Practices for Effective Aid Delivery, Volume 2 Budget Support, Sector Wide Approaches and Capacity Development in Public Financial Management


Book Description

Following the first volume of good practices for effective aid delivery, this second volume focuses more specifically on good practice in providing budget support and support to sector-wide approaches.







Building Capacity Through Financial Management


Book Description

This guide provides an overview of financial management and the practical tools that can help build the financial capacity of non-profit organisations and is intended for managers and trustees of non-profit organisations, providing tools and techniques for them to build financial systems and assess another organisation's financial capacity.




Implementing the Public Finance Management Act in South Africa


Book Description

The implementation of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), 1999 is reviewed in this book, focussing on the development and reform of financial governance arrangements after 2000. South Africa has a long way to go to ensure that financial reforms are translated into service delivery gains. Implementing reforms and making sure that citizens benefit is proving difficult, yet the convergence of various government agencies in addressing financial governance is beginning to inspire the kind of confidence needed to overcome the country's financial governance challenges. The authors find that, despite the challenges, the PFMA has begun to make a difference and, if properly implemented, may still provide the ground for a fundamental transformation of public-sector service delivery.




Minding the Gaps


Book Description

By integrating their poverty reduction strategies (PRSs), national budgets, and the corresponding reporting processes, low-income countries can strengthen domestic accountability and the implementation of pro-poor policies. Minding the Gaps, based on nine low-income country case studies and a review of relevant experience in four higher-income countries, offers practical insights for donors and national governments on how to strengthen the links between PRSs and budgets. PRS countries' efforts to integrate policy with budgeting processes have often had limited effect. Their policy making, planning, and budgeting are often embedded in fragmented processes and institutions. Going beyond mainly technical fixes that have been commonly used to address this fragmentation, this study frames domestic accountability in terms of ownership and incentive structures. Experience counsels the use of a simple approach that is not too ambitious. This approach should be centrally led and make use of existing systems while gradually improving them. It should build support from within and foster incentives for integration, for example by better linking PRS and budget reporting to actual decision-making processes. Also, simple budget reforms can significantly improve the budget's responsiveness to policies. Structuring a poverty reduction strategy paper in a more budget friendly manner can facilitate the interface with the budget by involving sector agencies more closely in elaborating policy priorities and establishing resource implications. It can also expand ownership and boost incentives for integration of a great number of stakeholders, thereby strengthening domestic accountability.







Capacity Development for Good Governance


Book Description

If there is one topic in development cooperation that transcends sectors and issues, it is developing capacity for governance. Good governance is a focal point in many projects and programs of the German Technical Cooperation. It is also a necessary element in every international declaration on development cooperation. In order to promote good governance successfully - i.e. to achieve actual progress - capacity development is essential. This book deals with governance issues in the water and health sectors and in relation to forests, land, public finance reforms, and civil society. Further, it includes the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's publication The Challenge of Capacity Development: Working Towards Good Practice. Experts in German development cooperation present their experiences by offering detailed insights into their work. They analyze the influence and added value of capacity development in development cooperation and, first and foremost, demonstrate the importance of capacity development for fostering good governance.




PEFA, Public Financial Management, and Good Governance


Book Description

This project, based on the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) data set, researched how PEFA can be used to shape policy development in public financial management (PFM) and other major relevant policy areas such as anticorruption, revenue mobilization, political economy analysis, and fragile states. The report explores what shapes the PFM system in low- and middle-income countries by examining the relationship between political institutions and the quality of the PFM system. Although the report finds some evidence that multiple political parties in control of the legislature is associated with better PFM performance, the report finds the need to further refine and test the theories on the relationship between political institutions and PFM. The report addresses the question of the outcomes of PFM systems, distinguishing between fragile and nonfragile states. It finds that better PFM performance is associated with more reliable budgets in terms of expenditure composition in fragile states, but not aggregate budget credibility. Moreover, in contrast to existing studies, it finds no evidence that PFM quality matters for deficit and debt ratios, irrespective of whether a country is fragile or not. The report also explores the relationship between perceptions of corruption and PFM performance. It finds strong evidence of a relationship between better PFM performance and improvements in perceptions of corruption. It also finds that PFM reforms associated with better controls have a stronger relationship with improvements in perceptions of corruption compared to PFM reforms associated with more transparency. The last chapter looks at the relationship between PEFA indicators for revenue administration and domestic resource mobilization. It focuses on the credible use of penalties for noncompliance as a proxy for the type of political commitment required to improve tax performance. The analysis shows that countries that credibly enforce penalties for noncompliance collect more taxes on average.




Public Financial Management and Its Emerging Architecture


Book Description

The first two decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed an influx of innovations and reforms in public financial management. The current wave of reforms is markedly different from those in the past, owing to the sheer number of innovations, their widespread adoption, and the sense that they add up to a fundamental change in the way governments manage public money. This book takes stock of the most important innovations that have emerged over the past two decades.