Nigeria and other African countries have been advised to increase funding for capacity building to enhance economic development and budgets implementation.
The African countries have been urged to support the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), which aim to build manpower on the continent.
These were some of the key messages by continental leaders, top capacity building leaders and strategic partners at the opening of the 24th Annual Meeting of the ACBF Board of Governors, which kicked off in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia yesterday.
Its theme is: “Developing Capacity to Mobilise Domestic Resources to Finance Africa’s Transformation”.
Those, who spoke at the event were the Executive Secretary of ACBF, Prof. Emmanuel Nnadozie; Deputy Chairperson, African Union Commission Erastus Mwencha; Ethiopian Minister of State for Finance Alemayehu Gujo; Chair of Board of Governors of ACBF and Gabon’s Minister of Budget and Public Accounts Christian Magnagna; Chair, ACBF’s Executive Board Chair Prof. Callisto Enias Madavo, represented by Mrs. Gun-Britt Andersson of Sweden and Director of Capacity Building of United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) Adeyemi Dipeolu.
Nnadozie said: “In fact, African countries are faced with, among other challenges the capacity to mobilise domestic resources to implement Agenda 2063 and the post-2015 development agenda; the national institutional and human capacity to domesticate and coordinate regional and continental policies; and the capacity to implement national, regional and continental policies which has a lot to do with the ability to design, plan, execute, monitor and evaluate programmes.
“Looking ahead, the forecast for much of African countries remains very encouraging. For example, Africa is ranked as the second fastest growing region and is more likely to maintain such position and even be the fastest in the world. Africa can make faster progress and take its rightful place in a globalised world. The fundamentals are in place in many countries: performance is better now than over the last three decades, young people will be well-schooled and well-trained for good jobs, etc.
“African governments are heavily investing in development as witnessed by the large number of infrastructure projects taking place across the continent at both the national and regional levels.
“But when it’s all said and done, infrastructure does dilapidate over time, requiring maintenance and at times renewal. Investing in human capital and institutions therefore remains the single most important investment a country can make. This is what the continent needs to focus on,” Mwencha said.
The AU Commission’s chief noted that in the rapidly changing world, the most important asset any country could have” is firstly its people and then its institutions”.
He added that many countries believed that capacity building “is a basic prerequisite for structural transformation, inclusive growth and sustainable development”.
Ethiopian minister of state for Finance hinged the country’s solid economic performance and double-digit growth in the last decade on investment in capacity building.
Gujo added that his government recognised that capacity building “is a building block of the country’s poverty reduction strategy, as capacity limitation both in the public and private sector are the main challenges to provide the required services”.
He urged African countries to take a cue from Germans, which “year after year, decade after decade patiently building up skills, investing in workers, institutions, new technology, research and innovation”.
“They do it, not because it yields immediate results but because they know it gives them an unassailable lead several years down the road. They keep building at it. There are no short cuts to capacity building, the earlier you start the better off you will be in the long term, this is a key take away point from the Ethiopian experience,” he said.
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