Our focus areas of work encompass achieving value for money in public spending, promoting budget transparency for greater accountability and participation, ensuring sustainable public debt management and building institutional capabilities for Public Financial Management (PFM) reform. Throughout the years, we have gained extensive experience working across sectors such as education, agriculture, health, extractives, infrastructure, and water, sanitation, and hygiene.
We envision a future where African nations succeed in PFM, characterised by public sector transparency, accountability, and efficiency. To chart our course towards this ambitious vision, we have formulated a comprehensive Theory of Change that guides our transformative journey across the continent.
Our Theory of Change is underpinned by three premises:
Improving the functionality of PFM systems requires context-specific and evidence-based practices, policies and procedures
Peer-to-peer learning is an effective way of learning
A regional organisation is an effective way to create legitimacy to discuss, promote and build commitment on good financial governance in Africa
Our work is rooted in the theory that change requires context-specific interventions as opposed to ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions. This view is supported by a growing body of literature suggesting technical know-how alone is insufficient to bring about lasting reform and improvement if it ignores the country context with its particular political economy.
Our Theory of Change is also premised on the conviction that peer-learning and exchange is an effective way to tap into, share and learn from the PFM expertise of senior budget officials. We respect the knowledge of PFM practitioners and facilitate opportunities for peers to contribute, question, challenge, empower and connect with each other on the ‘how to’ issues of PFM reforms. This is done within an environment of trust, allowing peers to be completely frank about the real challenges their administrations are dealing with. Many of these peer engagements go beyond purely technical discussions and dig deeper into those practical, ‘softer’ aspects of running reform processes that are invisible to outsiders.
We believe that peer-learning through an African organisation for Africa has a particular comparative advantage in facilitating change by bringing together practitioners with experience in a range of contexts confronting a range of PFM challenges (whether across or within countries or organisations). The legitimacy that we have to examine these issues ensures that the participating senior budget officials and government officials overall engage openly and constructively, and are committed to taking back what they have learned to their home countries.
Through this approach, we deviate from the more traditional, and often externally mediated, forms of technical assistance and training towards a model that allows the actual practitioners best placed to identify context-related challenges to develop and implement functional PFM approaches themselves.