Central Banks and ministries of finance across eastern and southern Africa have enhanced their capacity to efficiently stabilize their economies, improve the management of debt and of their financial sector thanks to the adoption of a number of ACBF-sponsored debt and financial management tools – such as models, manuals and procedures.
ACBF supported the Macroeconomic and Financial Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa (MEFMI) and the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM) to provide hands-on training, technical/advisory services to Central Banks, Ministry of Finance and Planning in sub-Saharan Africa. The results have been more than encouraging as training contributed to macroeconomic stability, debt management and improved financial sector management in the two organizations’ member countries through the development and implementation of model, manuals, procedures and tailor-made training and technical assistance.
In southern Africa, the Central Bank of Namibia and the Ministry of Finance of Botswana were able to almost accurately project the real GDP growth of 4.3% and 5.3% for 2013, against the actuals of 4.4% and 5.9% respectively. In Lesotho, MEFMI supported the government to develop an Economic Activity Indicator, which is currently being used to proxy the performance of the economy in the short to medium term. MEFMI has also supported the Ministry of Finance in Swaziland to construct a model for macroeconomic analysis in March 2012, which is now being actively used to make macroeconomic simulations. The institute also assisted the Bank of Namibia to develop a core macroeconomic model and Economic Indicators Analysis (EIA) tool for monitoring the Namibian economy in April 2013. Botswana was also able to estimate the output gap accurately using the macro model, and this variable has greatly improved the quality of inflation forecasts.
In east Africa, the National Bank of Rwanda has also been assisted by the institute to build a core model for inflation, which has improved inflation forecasting. In Djibouti, the capacity building support from the Foundation in 2004 enabled the Projet de Renforcement des Capacités de la Gouvernance Financière et de Contrôle de la République de Djibouti (IGE) to take off and to effectively promote good governance and accountability for the management of public fund the heart of any fight against corruption.
ACBF’s support has enabled the institution to improve its internal capacity as well as enhance its collaboration and networking with likeminded institution in the fight against corruption. IGE regularly conducts in depth investigation and strategic audits of government institutions that has led to significant changes and institutional reforms in the country. For example the audit of the health sector exposed a chaotic and opaque management of funds and cases of established fraud and the audit of the social security led to the merger of the two social security funds to become the National Social Security Council (CNSS).
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