By Maureen Chigbo, reporting from Yaounde, Cameroon

THE African Capacity Building Foundation, ACBF, used the occasion of its 27^th Annual meeting of the board of governors to highlights its contributions to achieving Africa’s development objectives.

Emmanuel Nnadozie, executive secretary of ACBF, who enumerated the foundation’s contributions in capacity building at on-going meeting on Thursday in Yaounde, Cameroon, said overall, during the period of the World Bank additional financing, 2014-2017, ACBF achieved its programme development objectives, PDO, adding that its performance was credibly measured. “During this period, the Foundation’s planned results were achieved. Indeed, all 4 (PDO)-level indicators as well as the all 12 Intermediate Results (IRIs) were either achieved or exceeded,” he said.

Stating that the foundation achieved significant results across the continent, Nnadozie said  ACBF provided support in policy research and analysis that led to concrete achievements in service delivery in Rwanda, preventing election violence in Ghana, evidence-based economic policy-making in Kenya, and domestic revenue mobilization in Ethiopia.

Other achievements include building public sector management capacity to improve public service delivery in West Africa; strengthening financial systems through capacity building in banking and finance in Southern and West Africa and promoting critical skills in science and technology in Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Tanzania that supported the sub-regions.

In supporting regional integration, two concrete examples of achievements are the enhanced effectiveness of financial sector institutions in Inter Governmental Authority for Development, IGAD, and the creation of and support to Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa’s, COMESA, research unit which made significant contributions in regional integration agenda.

ACBF also recorded success in promoting knowledge and learning area by supporting the African Union in identifying the capacities required to successfully implement Agenda 2063 and the strategies at addressing them as well as in the development and sharing of enhanced data and empirical evidence on capacity development for informed decision making through the Africa Capacity Report.

Its achievements also includes the establishment of the flagship African Think Tank Summit for peer-learning and exchange of innovative solutions to support Africa’s development agenda as well as the management of the enhanced knowledge brokerage on management for development results, MfDR, through a community of practice, that has advanced national and regional development processes.

Nnadozie expressed gratitude to all member States and ACBF partners, in particular, the African Development Bank Group, AFREXIMBANK, BADEA, UNDP, the World Bank Group for their tremendous support in making it possible for them to deliver for Africa.

He also thanked the government and people of the Republic of Cameroon for their kindness and warm hospitality in hosting the annual meeting while looking forward to a robust debate with concrete proposals and recommendations to effectively deal with this persistent challenge of youth unemployment that affects many of the countries of the continent.

– Jul. 19, 2018 @ 18:19 GMT