ACBF is Africa’s premier capacity-building institution. Established in February 1991, it is the outcome of a partnership between African governments and the international donor community. Its mission is to build sustainable human and institutional capacity for sustainable growth, poverty reduction and good governance in Africa.
Rwanda is part of the Foundation’s 45 Full Members which comprises of 4 international development institutions (the African Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) and 41 countries (Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-DRC, Côte d’Ivoire, Denmark, France Gabon, Ghana, Greece, India, Ireland, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, the Netherlands, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Sao Tomé & Principe, Senegal, Sudan, Swaziland, Sweden, Tanzania, Uganda, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Zambia and Zimbabwe). The African Union is an Honorary Member.
ACBF currently supports more than 150 full-fledged projects and programs, including regional organizations and operations as well as 26 National Focal Points. The Foundation has also provided small, rapid-response grants to innovative initiatives. Its work presently benefits at least 40 sub-Saharan African countries. It plans to cover all sub-Saharan African countries by 2011. Since 1991, it has committed close to US$390 million to capacity-building interventions. As of 31 December 2007, it had disbursed more than US$218 million to grant recipients.
ACBF’s support is enshrined in six core competency areas - namely, economic policy analysis and management, financial management and accountability, strengthening and monitoring of national statistics, public administration and management, strengthening of the policy analysis capacity of national parliaments, and professionalization of the voices of the private sector and civil society.
In Rwanda, ACBF started its supportive role in capacity building in 1999, when it initiated a needs assessment and formulation of a capacity building strategy for Rwanda’s economic management institutions.
In light of past experience and the capacity building needs, ACBF recommended that Rwanda needed a different approach to capacity building and more specifically public financial management.
To this effect, in June 2001, ACBF approved a Grant of US$ 3 million for the Government of Rwanda (GoR). The Grant is aimed at supporting the Government in strengthening public financial management.
In 2001, the Government decided to initiate a process of designing the Multi Sector Capacity Building Programme (MSCBP) to improve coherence, consistency and coordination of capacity building interventions in the public sector, private sector and civil society. The MSCBP was envisaged to provide a national framework within which all capacity building interventions would be designed, implemented and resources monitored and evaluated.
The MSCBP was officially launched in 2005, however in the course of its preparation and implementation; there was need for both financial and human resources to drive the process. In this regard, the Government through HIDA approached various stakeholders and development partners to support the MSCBP.
In December 2004, ACBF approved another Grant of US$ 4 million for the GoR in support of the implementation of MSCBP.
Despite the fact that MSBCP is supposed to span all sectors of the economy, the resources so far received from the World Bank and ACBF were mainly geared towards the public sector.
However, to-date, ACBF in close collaboration with HIDA has initiated other capacity building support programmes for the private sector and civil society. More specifically, ACBF has approved a Grant of US$ 1.7 million to support capacity building of the private sector in the country. Another proposal of US$ 400,000 has been earmarked by ACBF through HIDA to be channeled to support capacity building initiatives of the Civil Society.
HIDA was restructured (refer to link About) and the institution that is currently coordinating ACBF supported capacity building activities in the country is the Public Sector Capacity Building Secretariat (PSCBS).
For highlights of major interventions please go to News Articles Link.