AfDB institute trains public officials in anti-corruption fight

The African Development Institute of the African Development Bank (AfDB) will graduate the first cohort of government officials from its Public Finance Management Academy in Abuja on December 14.

The final phase of the executive training course on ‘Enhancing Accountability, Transparency, and Curbing Corruption and Illicit Financial Flows in Africa’, will end today, culminating in the graduation ceremony.

The course is the sixth and final module of an 18-month structured training course on public finance management for mid to senior-level officials from ministries of finance and planning, central banks, and other public financial management institutions from all African countries.

Participants are drawn from key anti-corruption agencies, statistical offices and others.

The Public Finance Management Academy runs the course in collaboration with experts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and other related institutions.

As part of the week’s events, African finance ministers, central bankers, and debt managers will meet on December 15 to discuss the establishment of an African Debt Management Initiative Network.

This will also be an opportunity for African public debt managers to help shape the agenda of the network to ensure ownership and commitment to its implementation.
The African Development Bank will also launch its report on the Benchmark Macroeconomic Models for Effective Policy Management in Africa.

According to AfDB, lack of accountability and transparency, corruption, and illicit financial flows (IFFs) create a vicious cycle of fiscal sinking holes in Africa’s public resources. The regional bank said governments lose revenue to IFFs and corruption, forcing them to borrow.

The AfDB noted that these challenges are primarily the result of fundamental public governance and structural weaknesses in African economies as well as weak programme and project implementation capacity due to a critical skills gap and inadequate tools and weak international cooperation efforts to curb corruption and IFFs.

In response to the challenges of IFFs, money laundering, and terrorist financing, the African Development Bank has developed several policy and strategic instruments, including the Bank’s Policy on the Prevention of IFFs (2017) and the Action Plan for the Prevention of Illicit Financial Flows in Africa (2017-2021), extended to 2023), which prioritise capacity building for African countries and regional economic communities (RECs) to effectively combat IFFs.

The bank has also developed the Strategy for Economic Governance in Africa (SEGA), which highlights the importance of supporting countries in combating illicit financial flows (IFFs) and money laundering.