The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved the new Results Management Framework (RMF), for the period 2016-2025. The RMF is designed, not just to measure the Bank's performance, but also to improve it. The RMF is aligned with the Bank's five priority areas of development, the "High 5s": light up and power Africa, feed Africa, industrialise Africa, integrate Africa and improve the quality of life for the people of Africa.
The RMF also monitors the Bank's Development Business Delivery Model (DBDM), to increase the institution's effectiveness and efficiency. More specifically, the RMF measures the Bank's performance at four levels: Level 1, tracks development progress across Africa. Level 2, measures the Bank's contributions towards development in all its operations. Level 3, assesses the quality of the Bank's operations, and Level 4, monitors the Bank's efficiency as an organisation.
Africa's needs are many and urgent, so the African Development Bank (AfDB) is relentlessly focused on increasing and improving its development impact. That's why the Bank has redesigned one of its key corporate management tools, the Results Measurement Framework.
Presenting the document to Board members, the Director for Delivery, Corporate Performance and Results Department, Simon Mizrahi, , underscored that "the Results Measurement Framework presents itself as a blueprint to improve the quality and development effectiveness of our operations." This RMF provides an enabling environment for the Bank to critically assess its operations and successfully meets the High 5 goals, within the framework of the Ten Year Strategy for 2013-2022.
This RMF builds on good practices and innovates on major fronts:
Increasing the Bank's strategic focus on five of the Ten-Year Strategy's priority areas. The Bank needs a results framework that promotes transformative impact in the Bank's five priority areas of intervention, the High 5s.
Supporting the implementation of a more effective delivery model. The RMF tracks progress against the DBDM's key performance drivers, which are intended to help the Bank become a nimbler and more effective development organisation.
Better measuring the Bank's development impact. While the Bank is effective at tracking outputs--such as how many kilometres of roads have been built--it is introducing the Development Impact Approach to measure and assess the wider impact of its activities, including jobs created and economic growth.
Improving the way the Bank assesses the private sector's contribution to development. The private sector is one of Africa's key drivers of economic growth and job creation. In recent years, the Bank has been investing an increasing share of its capital in the private sector--from $250 million in 2005 to $2.2 billion in 2015. The Bank is introducing new tools and processes that will allow it to better capture the development impact of its support to the private sector.
Increasing the Bank's attention to gender equality. Advancing gender equality is central to implementing the High 5s and to achieving the Ten-Year Strategy's goal of inclusive growth. The Bank's RMF is placing renewed emphasis on tracking progress in reducing the gaps between men and women, in line with the Bank's 2014 gender strategy.
Board members approved this RMF as a tool that provides the means to track the High 5s and DBDM implementation, and strengthens the Bank's results ecosystem. For his part, chairing the Board meeting, AfDB Vice President Alberic Kacou stated that the Bank was proud "to release an RMF that is 90% compatible with the Sustainable Development Goals" and added: "we now need to operationalise the results measurement framework across departments and at staff level".
