What is the link between the Africa Capacity Building Foundation's activities and the theme of the 2012 Annual Meetings: Africa and the Emerging Global Landscape - challenges and Opportunities?
As unanimously agreed in all recent studies, Africa has been on an exceptional and steady growth path over the past decade. The continent is subject to the most optimistic forecasts in terms of transformation to become the next global engine of growth. A number of challenges and opportunities lie ahead for this optimistic landscape to translate into concrete results. The theme of the African Development Bank Group's 2012 Annual Meeting, which is "Africa and Emerging Global Landscape - Challenges and Opportunities" is therefore extremely pertinent and timely to raise awareness of all Stakeholders of Africa's development on the steps to be taken to make the best use of the Continent's potential.
It is in this regard that ACBF is structuring its activities to increase the effectiveness of the investments of its key partners such as the African Development Bank Group, among other objectives. ACBF is doing so through its next five-year strategy focused on enhancing critical capacities in three pillars.
The first is around promoting political and social stability for transformational change--Africa needs stability to transform the commodity boom into sustainable development results and can do so with capacity to implement development programs and deliver real results to the average citizen. The second pillar aims to engage and regulate the productive sector and to track policy impact especially around the capabilities to transform agriculture and better manage natural resources.
The final pillar relates to tracking policy impact, which embeds evaluation and learning in assessing what works and what does not in the policy arena. Evaluation is also aimed at capacity to embed accountability for results in the public decision-making chain. ACBF is in the process of renovating its cooperation with the African Development Bank Group in a way that puts that partnership at the heart of the Bank Group's operations.
How would you describe the cooperation between the AfDB Group and ACBF?
The ACBF is a long-standing partner of the African Development Bank Group. The Bank Group was among the development partners who understood as early as 1991 the importance of capacity building in Africa's development process. Since then, the African Development Bank Group has been working hand in hand with 50 African and non-African countries; the World Bank Group and the United Nations Development Programme. It has achieved significant results in improving the macroeconomic environment in many African countries, in institutionalizing policy dialogue between governments and non-State actors and in increasing the supply of competent economists for public administration management in Africa with the support of the African Development Bank Group.
The ACBF is now, through the implementation of its third Strategic Medium Term Plan, resolutely working with African countries to tackle the challenges that lie ahead in the process of transforming their economies. While the partnership has achieved tremendous results on the ground such as the support to the finance and banking sector in terms of skills and competences and policies that have helped Africa fare very well in the turbulent climate of the global economic crisis the partnership is even more relevant today in shaping the capabilities Africa needs to emerge as a viable growth pole in the global economy.
