The Economic Commission for Africa, held on 10-12 February in Rabat a training workshop on the Integrated Planning and Reporting Toolkit (IPRT), in partnership with the High Commission for Planning of the Kingdom of Morocco.
The Integrated Planning and Reporting Toolkit is an ECA sponsored web application which responds to the needs of African countries seeking to implement simultaneously multiple national and international development commitments such as the SDGs (Agenda 2030) or Africa's Agenda 2063. The IPRT aims to facilitate the adoption and integration of both Agenda 2030 and 2063 with national development plans.
Ahmed Al-Awah, Chief of the ECA IT Strategic Advisory Unit, stated that: "The IPRT will support planning officials' efforts to align national development plans with both Agenda 2030 and 2063. The tool also provides an easy to use process and interface to promote the national monitoring of the progress made against achieving the planned goals and targets at the national and international level as well as facilitate the reporting of progress made in a harmonised fashion based on data from national as well as global indicators."
In addition, the IPRT aims to enable African countries to identify areas where there are data gaps for improving monitoring and reporting which enables a more effective monitoring of progress made through the use of an integrated framework to assess the country's alignments with national and international objectives and commitments and compare their own national progress with that of other participating countries.
Nearly 30 officials from 14 ministries and key Moroccan institutions benefited from the training. They included the Prime Minister's administration, the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Administration Reform, the Minister of Industry, Trade, Green and Digital Economy, Ministry of National Education, Vocational Training, Higher Education and Scientific Research as well as the High Commission for Water and Forests and the Fight against Desertification.
An ECA delegation from ECA headquarters, which visited Morocco for the training, met with officials from the High Commission for Planning, the Sustainable Development Unit of the Moroccan Ministry of Energy, Mines, Water and Environment and representatives of the UN system in Morocco to present the IPRT tool and discuss the rollout strategy for the IPRT in the country. The delegation will return to Morocco in the coming weeks to initiate the implementation of the IPRT within the existing planning process of Morocco working with the various government stakeholders.
Twenty African countries including Morocco have been trained to use the IPRT and are currently using it and/or have plans for its immediate use over the next few months. Additional training workshops are planned for Côte d'Ivoire, Mauritania, Senegal, Sudan and Tunisia this year.
The IPRT tool will form part of a wider project jointly carried with other UN agencies and development partners that ultimately aims to inspire a new generation of national development plans in Africa.
