A $6.12 million grant has been approved by the African Development Fund to support the improvement of public finance governance in low-income African nations.
The cash will be used to implement Phase 2 of the Regional Institutional Support Project in Public Finance Governance (RISPFG) by the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF) and the Collaborative Africa Budget Reform Initiative (CABRI), two pan-African organizations (CABRI).
The grant, which was formally approved on 3 November 2022, will be split as follows: $3.90 million will go to ATAF to support budget reforms and improve public finance management, and $2.22 million will go to CABRI to support tax administration reforms and domestic resource mobilization efforts on the continent.
The African Development Bank approved the first phase of this project in 2016, and both institutions successfully closed the first phase in September 2021. (ATAF and CABRI). The main goal of the project is to help recipient countries grow and develop in a way that benefits everyone by making it easier for them to use their own resources and manage public money.
More particular, it aims to strengthen public financial management capabilities, integrate gender and climate change into taxation, and improve African tax systems through the development of technical ability. The project will also assist nations in forging a unifying stance and a more powerful voice for the continent on regional and international venues.
According to Abdoulaye Coulibaly, Director of the Governance and Public Financial Management Coordination Office at the African Development Bank, the project’s goals included encouraging the transition to low-carbon economies through climate-smart budgeting and fiscal policies, as well as strengthening national systems’ resilience to various shocks.
According to Coulibaly, the initiative “would strengthen the activities of the Public Financial Management Academy, a virtual platform for building African countries’ capability across the cycle and ecosystem of public financial management, founded in August 2022 by the Bank.”
The project will benefit the African Development Fund member nations that are also a part of the two implementing organizations. Building capacity will be beneficial for their tax administrations as well as staff members from the finance ministries. The project will help the African continent reach its development goals and meet a number of commitments, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, Finance for Development, and Agenda 2063. It will be put into action over the course of three years.
