The contributions of the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) in correcting the continent’s critical skills, deficits in leadership, inhibiting mindsets and weak institutions in key areas such as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and Agriculture have shown that the African Union’s Specialised Agency for Capacity Development has justified the objectives of its creation by its founding fathers. The NATION’S ASSISTANT EDITOR BOLA OLAJUWON examines the ACBF’s 30 years of existence.
Capacity-building: The missing link in African development
SO much was expected of African countries in the 1950s and 1960s after their post-independence from colonial lords. But, it was discovered after several decades of unsuccessful development efforts by international development experts that good governance was and still is a critical requirement for sustainable development on the continent. This is contingent upon environments of developed human and institutional capacities. Several publications and the work of several partners show that Africa’s development efforts are being stumbled by severe capacity deficits often in the form of shortage of critical skills, deficits in leadership, inhibiting mindsets and weak institutions. The continent’s practical skills shortage is acute in key areas such as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and Agriculture.
It was also discovered that most African higher educational institutions, according to their colonial orientations and programmes, were not building the required human capacities to take the continent to the Promised Land in critical thematic areas, especially in economic, parliamentary services, civil service, scientific, educational, academics, law enforcement and others.
Also, Vice President, Africa Region of the World Bank Edward V.K. Jaycox, said this about the state of African universities today. He said one can see that there is no longer the kind of capacity to generate new capacity in terms of human and institutional management that there was before. Also, Jaycox added that a look at the civil service in many countries shows that it is not in good shape. “It’s demoralised; it’s underpaid; it’s bloated,” he said.
A study in 2021 by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicated that overseas development assistance invested in technical cooperation in the last 50 years amounts to “as much as USD 400 billion, of which training and other learning-oriented programmes constitute a prominent part”. These amounts spent did not include funds expended by individual national agencies on capacity developments, which were not well-coordinated, leading to the dominant prescriptive, supply-driven, one-size-fits-all, and fragmented nature of most such initiatives.
However, the majority of the initial plans failed to achieve meaningful results. For example, less than one-third of the civil service reform projects implemented by the World Bank between 1987 and 1997 “were rated satisfactory”.
Experts who are involved in economic development anywhere in the world know how critical human and institutional capacity is to the development effort and the chances of success. It is critical not only in the sense of better management of economies but also in the ability to react to the realities of the world economy. In the last 20 years, Africa has had to face a very hostile general economic environment and most of the crises have been generated by the inability to respond to the challenges at hand.
ACBF to the rescue
However, African leaders saw the critical need for capacity-building and they established African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) as the African Union’s Specialised Agency for Capacity Development.
Since 199I, the ACBF has spearheaded and robustly coordinated capacity development programmes worth more than $700 million across 48 countries and eight regional economic communities (RECs) in Africa. Unlike other development agencies focusing on mere aspects of infrastructural development, ACBF has gathered the requisite experience that makes it the go-to institution for expert knowledge and human resources to facilitate the timely implementation of continental and national development agendas. Prof. Emmanuel Nnadozie, an economist and development expert, who became the Executive Secretary of the foundation on December 1, 2013 from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Addis Ababa, where he worked from 2004 to 2012, has further refocused the ACBF for greater productivity, efficiency and effectiveness. Prof. Nnadozie last post at the UNECA was Director of Macroeconomic Policy Division and Chief Economist.
After 30 years of effective work, the foundation is best placed to advise and support African countries, regional economic communities and institutions on decisive steps to take to develop the practical skills urgently required for the continent’s economic transformation.
At every fora, ACBF has emphasized that Africa needs improved governance to succeed with its ambition for transformation, but it can only do this by covering the huge skills deficit the continent has in areas such as engineering and in raising its agricultural productivity to required levels. According to a study carried out by the foundation last year, 4.3 million more engineers are needed to tackle Africa’s infrastructure problems and the continent needs 1.6 million more agricultural researchers and scientists aside from other grim facts the ACBF had unearthed in its reports.
The foundation and a plethora of achievements
It is no longer news that ACBF-supported institutions have conducted intensive training programmes for national parliaments in support of their legislative activities as well as their oversight functions on the executive.
The foundation had created or strengthened 35 think tanks and policy institutes in Africa and established them as sustainable institutions and other institutions that have become key drivers of policy discourse and debates as well as reliable conduits or sources of technical and advisory support to stakeholders along the policy value chains and collectively developing informed solutions to the pressing development challenges facing Africa.
As a Nigerian journalist, I can assert that with ACBF’s support, Nigeria’s National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS) has emerged as one of the most successful parliamentary Initiatives in the history of my country. NILS is the first fully established legislative institute in West Africa and provides capacity building support to Nigerian federal and state assemblies and the Nigerian National Assembly, as well as to legislators and staff from other African countries.
The foundation has also offered a similar capacity-building project to enhance the institutional effectiveness of parliaments in many African countries through executive leadership development programmes initiated to strengthen the leadership skills of newly elected parliamentarians.
Knowing the media as the fourth estate of the realm, the ACBF has promoted a culture of media excellence through supporting the West African Journalists Association (WAJA) to strengthen the voices of media to promote democracy and ensure participatory governance, accountability and transparency in ECOWAS member-countries.
It’s verifiable that WAJA has trained about 600 journalists and media workers nationally and regionally, 242 journalists have been trained as trainers. 125 WAJA trained journalists are now qualified to be part of the pool of trainers whom the PRC-UJAO hires for national programmes.
ACBF’s intervention in higher education institutions has contributed immensely to strengthening teaching and research capacities with many graduates of ACBF programmes now working as policy analysts, economists, and planners in government policy units and making important contributions, in areas of policy formulation and implementation.
ACBF has also provided institutional support aimed at reviving infrastructure such as restocking libraries, supplying furniture, providing teaching materials, upgrading computer networks and internet connectivity and even renovating buildings and strengthening human resource capacity at the participating higher education institutions on the continent.
The foundation has also contributed immensely to macroeconomic policy formulation and analysis efforts in many countries in Africa as well as providing skills to people who now hold key posts in the public sector.
ACBF’s Flagship Publication – Africa Capacity Report (ACR) – a timely addition to ACBF’s growing list of knowledge products, and a testimony of the foundation’s leadership in the field of capacity development, which is providing an authoritative characterisation of the state and evolution of Africa’s capacity across space and time. ACR also provides an invaluable tool for country benchmarking and monitoring and evaluation of capacity development interventions.
According to the Economic Development in Africa Report 2020 by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Africa loses about US$88.6 billion, 3.7 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP), annually in illicit financial flows. The High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (FACTI Panel) report released in February 2021 cautions that IFFs — from trade misinvoicing, tax abuse, cross-border corruption, and transnational financial crime — drain resources from sustainable development, as well as worsen inequalities, fuel instability, undermine governance, and damage public trust.
Nnadozie identified limited awareness of the impact of IFFs, weak political leadership, corruption and the inability to design, implement, monitor and evaluate policies and regulations to curb IFFs as some factors that allow IFFs to occur.
Others, he said, are a weak implementation of appropriate legal, regulatory and/or prudential frameworks to curb IFFs, lack of transfer pricing units and poor contract negotiation skills.
Nnadozie said Nigeria and other African countries suffering the web of IFFs need enhanced coordination, capacity development, regulatory and legislative support and effective information sharing to tackle IFFs. The foundation has since joined the train to tackle the IFFs menace.
The need for AU member-states and global support
In conclusion, a careful review of the capacity building literature and practice in the last few decades shows that capacity building is a complex, long-term process the design and implementation of which necessitate a great amount of data collection, analysis, networking, planning, and other resource-intensive activities. The ACBF has shown that this needs to be based on a viable theory of change building on a thorough understanding of the dynamic relationships within the complex systemic context of the capacity-building intervention.
Therefore, it requires long-term involvement and constant monitoring and evaluation to ensure that the macro change process is on track. Hence, African Union member-states, partners and agencies in the international development community should keep on supporting the ACBF financially to realise its thematic objectives and building the effective and efficient personnel needed to take the continent to the Promised Land in the key areas such as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and Agriculture.
Olajuwon is a journalist with The Nation newspaper, Lagos, Nigeria.
