International support for top-level conference on budgeting in Africa

A regional conference and workshop on participatory budgeting, transparency, participation, and independent oversight will be held in Durban, South Africa from 10-14 March 2008. The intention is to bring together different initiatives at policy, operational, and capacity building levels in the region in order to strength dialogue and collaboration among key African stakeholders.

The conference aims at :

enhancing knowledge and promoting exchange of experience among key national policy-makers in Africa on how to strengthen transparency, participation, and independent oversight in decentralisation reforms ;

deepening knowledge and sharing innovations on how to operationalise participatory budgeting at local level ;

catalysing and facilitating peer-to-peer exchange of experience among African practitioners to help continuous learning opportunities.

The conference is an initiative of the Municipal Development Partnership for Eastern and Southern Africa in cooperation with the Municipality of Durban.

It has the support of the World Bank, the World Bank Institute, the Trust Fund for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development, the Swiss Development Cooperation, UN-HABITAT and the New York University-Wagner School of Public Administration.

Participatory budgeting is rapidly gaining attention from governments, civil society, and international development agencies as an effective platform for strengthening transparency and accountability in revenue generation, expenditure planning and delivery of public services and infrastructure.

It can also offer a comprehensive approach for implementing the principles of good governance.

International and regional development agencies and civil society organisations, such as the World Bank Institute, UN-HABITAT, the Swiss Development Cooperation, the Municipal Development Partnership of Eastern and Southern Africa, the Human Science Research Council of South Africa, and ENDA, the Senegal-based NGO, have aligned their programmes to support participatory budgeting in the continent.

The regional seminar and workshop in Durban will be the first of an initial series of two events : the first will target mainly Anglophone Africa, and the second Francophone.

It will have key presentation and highly interactive panels, with break-out small group sessions and will encourage participants to share their knowledge, experiences and ideas.

A total of 40 participants will be selected to attend the workshop period. The selection of participants will be coordinated by a commission established by the organisers and sponsors of the conference. Source : NEPAD, december 14, 2007

Mauritius moving ahead with its Peer Review process

A follow-up mission of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) led by Prof. Mohammed Seghir Babés, a member of the Panel of Eminent Persons, visited Mauritius from 6-10 December 2007.

The objective was to review progress towards completion of the Mauritius country self-assessment report and take the necessary steps leading to the APRM country review mission to Mauritius in 2008.

The follow-up mission included two members of the APR Secretariat, Dr. Moise Nembot, coordinator for political governance, and Dalmar Jama, research analyst for corporate governance.

In a meeting with the President of Mauritius, Sir Anerood Jugnauth, Professor Babés commended the commitment of the Mauritius leadership to the APRM, and observed that Mauritius will soon be ready for the APRM country review mission. In reply President Jugnauth emphasised his commitment to full implementation of the APRM process.

So far 27 African countries are involved in the APRM. Peer reviews have been completed in five countries, Algeria, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Africa and Benin is scheduled for peer review in January 2008.

* The goal of the APRM is to promote the adoption of policies, standards and best practices that favour political stability, economic growth and sustainable development. Source : NEPAD, december 14, 2007

Training journalists to be trainers

The NEPAD Training the Trainer programme, run in collaboration with the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ), has just completed its third seminar. The objective is to provide African journalists with skills and techniques which they, in turn, can pass on to their colleagues.

In just 18 months NEPAD has trained over 50 journalists from Algeria, Angola,, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Swaziland, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

“We will continue with the programme next year until all the countries in Africa are covered”, said Thaninga Shope-Linney, NEPAD Genera Manager, Communications and Outreach. Source : NEPAD, december 14, 2007