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.







Public Finance and Economic Growth in Developing Countries


Book Description

Public finance is crucial to a country’s economic growth, yet successful reform of public finances has been rare. Ethiopia is an example of a country that undertook comprehensive reform of its core financial systems, independent of the IMF and the World Bank, and successfully transformed itself into one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa. With Ethiopia’s twelve-year reform as its guiding case study, this book presents new analytical frameworks to help governments develop better financial reforms. It shows in detail how four core financial systems—budgeting, accounting, planning, and financial information systems—can be reformed. One of the principal findings presented is that governments must establish basic public financial administration before moving to more sophisticated public financial management. Other key findings include the identification of four strategies of reform (recognize, improve, change, and sustain), the centrality of ongoing learning to the process of reform, and the importance of government ownership of reform. This book will be of interest to researchers and policymakers concerned with public finance, developmental economics, and African studies.







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.




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.







Harmonising Donor Practices for Effective Aid Delivery


Book Description

Annotation Effective use of official development assistance is an important aspect of achieving the international community's commitment to helping partner countries meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving global poverty by 2015. These good practice guidelines, developed under the auspices of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), are designed to help enable development agencies to improve the effectiveness of development assistance, while maintaining the same standards of quality.




DAC Guidelines and Reference Series Harmonising Donor Practices for Effective Aid Delivery, Volume 2


Book Description

The international community is committed to helping partner countries meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving global poverty by 2015. Effective use of scarce official development assistance is one important contribution to this end. This is why the development community, under the auspices of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), is dedicated to implementing improvements in aid practices that deliver more effective and harmonised support to the efforts of partner countries. The good practices presented here have been designed to respond to this concern. They represent a set of practical steps that – if applied by development agencies – should significantly improve the effectiveness of development assistance. Following the first volume of good practices published in 2003, this second volume focuses more specifically on good practice in providing budget support (Chapter 2) and support to sector-wide approaches (Chapter 3). In doing so, it acknowledges the special relevance of public financial management issues for both of these modalities of aid delivery. This is why the last chapter of this volume (Chapter 4) is devoted to setting out good practice in providing support to capacity development for public financial management. The chapters are complemented by a substantive annex that outlines a proposed approach to supporting improved public financial management performance. In the same collection: Volume 1: Harmonising Donor Practices for Effective Aid Delivery Volume 2: Harmonising Donor Practices for Effective Aid Delivery: Budget Support, Sector Wide Approaches and Capacity Development in Public Financial Management Volume 3: Harmonising Donor Practices for Effective Aid Delivery: Strengthening Procurement Capacities in Developing Countries The first volume in this collection on Harmonising Donor Practices for Effective Aid Delivery (ISBN 9264199829) was published in May 2003 without a volume number. Its success was such that a short collection of books (of which this is Volume 2) has been created.