The African Natural Resources Centre of the African Development Bank has launched a first of its kind Financial Modelling for the Extractives Sector (FIMES) project aimed at strengthening domestic resource mobilization and institutional capacity and economic resilience in transitional countries.

The multinational project funded by the Bank's Transitional Support Facility, seeks to build capacity for financial modeling and economic resilience in transitional countries. These include Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Madagascar, Niger, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Zimbabwe. The meeting was held on 1st July.

At the meeting, Seydou Coulibaly, FIMES Project Manager, noted that the project is a first of its kind for the Bank and the African continent. Twenty policy officials in each regional member country will participate in the training, learning and knowledge exchange activities as direct national beneficiaries - with at least 40% of beneficiaries being women.

The meeting, which follows a successful inception workshop held in November 2020, paved the way for the final selection of national beneficiaries, the development of a virtual knowledge hub, and the rollout of the preliminary online courses.

The Virtual Knowledge Hub will support learning and knowledge transfer among beneficiaries toward rapid scale-up of their financial modeling capabilities.

The Bank has contracted a consortium to deliver FIMES training modules. Consortium representatives from Fondation pour les Etudes et Recherches sur le Developpement International (FERDI) and Columbia University's Center on Sustainable Investment, present at the meeting described the training, which will center on modeling of mineral and petroleum rents, tax policies and financial modeling for extractive projects. Other areas under the training will be rent sharing between governments and extractive companies, and emerging policy issues such as the low-carbon transition on returns from mining and petroleum projects. The training will allow participants to learn at their own pace and convenience.

"The FIMES project is relevant and timely to stimulate domestic resource mobilization in the beneficiary countries, in light of pressures on public revenues as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic," Vanessa Ushie, Manager, ANRC's Policy Analysis Division said.