On
August 1-3 2007, the African Capacity Building
Foundation
(ACBF), Africa’s premier capacity building
institution, successfully held the Second Pan African
Capacity Building Forum (aka Maputo 2007), in Maputo,
Mozambique. The Government of Mozambique hosted
the Forum. Other co-sponsors comprised the African
Union Commission; the African Development Bank;
the African Economic Research Consortium; Canadian
International Development Agency; Chr. Michelsen
Institute; Commonwealth Secretariat; Economic Commission
for Africa; European Centre for Development Policy
Management; Institute of Development Studies, University
of Sussex; International Lawyers and Economists
Against Poverty; Nordic Africa Institute; the New
Partnership for Africa’s Development;
UNAIDS; and, the United Nations Development
Programme. Declared open by the President of Mozambique,
H.E. Armando Emilio Guebuza, the three-day Forum
was attended by 641 participants.
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H.E. Armando Emillo Guebuza, President
of the Republic of Mozambique (right)
and H.E. Benjamin William Mkapa,
former President of Tanzania (left)
in a warm handshake during the opening
session of the Second Pan African
Capacity Building Forum on August
1, 2007 at the Joaquim Alberto Chissano
International Conference Centre,
Maputo, Mozambique. |
Dignitaries attending the Forum
included: H.E. Benjamin Mkapa, former President
of the Republic of Tanzania; Hon. Luisa Dias
Diogo, Prime Minister of the Republic of Mozambique;
H.E. Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos, Prime
Minister of the Republic of Angola; and, 23 Ministers
who headed country delegations. The country delegations
consisted of representatives of the public sector;
representatives of the private sector; and representatives
of civil society. Other participants were ACBF
partner institutions, representatives of multilateral
and bilateral agencies, representatives of co-sponsoring
institutions, members of the diplomatic corps
based in Mozambique and major development stakeholders
in the Mozambique.
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H.E. Armando Emillo Guebuza, President
of the republic of Mozambique declaring
open the second Pan African Capacity
Building Forum at the Joaquim Alberto
Chissano International Conference
Centre, Maputo, Mozambique on August
1, 2007 |
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The Forum, under the theme ‘Towards Development
Results for Africa,’ examined key issues,
strategies, experiences and lessons in capacity
building on the African continent with a view
to providing ACBF with guideposts in the development
of responsive interventions under the Foundation’s
Second Strategic Medium Term Plan, 2007-2011
(SMTP II), was delivered in two plenary sessions
and six parallel sessions. The issues examined
by the Forum were: Africa: Capacity, Growth and
Governance Performance – Prospects of Achieving
the Millennium Development Goals by 2015;
Capacity Utilization, Retention and the Use of
African Diasporan Communities as Development
Actors – Challenges and Opportunities;
Capacity Building in the Context of HIV/AIDS
Pandemic – The Issues, Challenges, Lessons
and Safety Nets; Capacity Building in Post-Conflict
African Countries – Strategies, Lessons
and Guides to Interventions; Recent Development
Experiences from China, India, Malaysia and South
Korea – Some Lessons for Capacity Building
in Africa; Reform of Technical Assistance and
Strengthening of Donor Coordination in the Building
of Sustainable Indigenous Capacity in Africa – The
Results, Constraints and Lessons; Knowledge Management
and Performance Measurement in Capacity Building – A
Review of Frameworks and Major Issues; and Gender
Equality and Women Empowerment in Africa’s
Development – Capacity Building Strategies
and Programs.
Opening session: H.E Benjamin William Mkapa sets the scene
Setting the scene for the Forum, the keynote
address delivered by H.E. Benjamin Mkapa, the
former President of the Republic of Tanzania,
highlighted on-going capacity challenges in Africa.
He attributed Africa’s poor progress primarily
to lack of capacity. He noted that of the 50
Least Developed Countries (LCDs), 28 were in
Africa. “These countries lack political,
economic, social and institutional capacity to
enable to fast track the process towards realizing
even the minimum development goals,” H.E.
Mkapa cautioned
H.E. Mkapa argued that African countries now
needed to transit from economic crisis management
and stabilization to strategic planning, and
laid out his vision for the Continent to claim
a fairer share of the benefits of globalization.
He emphasized the need to strive to install the
hardware (infrastructure and supply-side capacity)
and software (institutions) of development, as
well as attend to the special needs of strategic
sectors such as agriculture and the informal
sector. H.E Mkapa noted that African leaders
had challenges to face such as ensuring national
unity, national independence, and meeting the
expectations of their people.
H.E Mkapa emphasized that: “For
Africa to accelerate development and reduce poverty,
African states, individually, regionally or continentally
must build capacity to be able to formulate homegrown
policies and be able to implement them. Such
capacity will enable African states to:
- Engender stable and good political
governance and avert internal/regional
strife;
- Raise the rates of economic growth and
levels of exports.
- Boost investments by mobilizing
internal and external capital, private sector
and
public- private partnerships.
- Increase
productive capacity through trade-related
infrastructure, South-South
technical assistance and North-South
Cooperation.
- Sustain strong economic growth
where it is on trend.
Generate opportunities; To absorb the
rapidly growing non agricultural work
force; and To better utilize national,
international and
Diaspora human resources
capacity, and to overcome the development obstacles such
as HIV / AIDS and the, sometimes, obstructive
or uncoordinated
donor
assistance.”
In his concluding remarks, H.E
Mkapa challenged the participants at the Forum
to ask themselves as Africans as to how we are
positioning ourselves to challenges like globalization
and what are our views of the world are.
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H.E. Benjamin
William Mkapa, former President of The
United Republic of Tanzania delivering
the Keynote Address at the Second Pan African
Capacity Building Forum on August 1, 2007
at the Joaquim Alberto Chissano International
Conference Centre, Maputo, Mozambique. |
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In his opening remarks, Dr.
Soumana Sako, Executive Secretary, ACBF, thanked
the Government of Mozambique and the co-sponsors
who collectively helped make the Forum a reality.
He noted that the Forum represented a landmark
in the strategic vision of the Foundation, as
it sought to further enhance and entrench its
position as the premier capacity building and
knowledge-based institution on the Continent.
He noted that the coming together of the various
stakeholders who played their different roles
in tackling the capacity challenges in Africa
at the Forum was significant in itself as, “together,
our collective voices and dialogue can, and should,
focus on beating a path that promotes equitable
and sustainable development – a path premised
on knowledge sharing, capacity enhancement, gender
equality, and good governance aimed at making
the Continent a better place for our children
and our children’s children”, he
noted.
“Unless human and institutional
capacity building challenges are tackled, poverty
reduction in Africa will remain an elusive goal,” stressed
Dr. Sako. He further pointed out that: “Africa
needs a public sector that is highly competent,
professional, objective and dedicated; a private
sector that is not only innovative and growth
oriented, but also efficient and competitive;
civil society that is constructively responsive
and capable of working in partnership with both
the public and private sectors with a view to
achieving development goals; an educational system
that is relevant to the African context and responsive
to development needs; and a conducive socio-economic
and political environment”.
At the operational level of
the Foundation, Dr. Sako touched on the recently
launched Second Strategic Medium Term Plan 2007 –2011
(SMTP II). SMTP II would commit an additional
US$350 million to capacity building efforts on
the Continent. Dr. Sako called on African governments
and the Continent’s development partners
to deliver on their promises of financial commitment
to the Foundation in order to mobilize the required
resources for the successful implementation of
the plan.
Summary of the Forum’s
key conclusions or recommendations:
Plenary I: Africa: Capacity,
Growth, and Governance Performance - Prospects
of Achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The salient message
of this session stated amongst others that: comprehensive efforts should
be made to ensure the full employment of Africa’s (limited) intellectual
capital; there is need to strengthen women’s empowerment to ensure
that Africa’s full human resource potential is brought to bear on her
development; efforts should be made to bring non-state actors into the development
process; and, there is need to mitigate the overload of development goals
and targets into one streamlined and manageable strategic framework.
Parallel Session I: Capacity Utilization and Retention, and the Use of African
Diasporan Communities as Development Actors — Challenges and Opportunities.
The key observations of this session included the following: While the brain
drain is inexorably set to continue and entails a net loss to Africa, efforts
should be made to explore and pursue feasible strategies for harnessing the
participation of Africa’s diasporan communities for the development of
the Continent. To this end, the session called for the elimination of the many
barriers that currently stand in the way of that cause. Another key observation
was the need to explore within the aegis of the international trading system
the possibility of negotiating protocols with recipient countries that recognize
the brain drain as a tradeable commodity that bestows value and international
competitiveness to receiving countries, and as such sending countries should
therefore be rewarded.
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Prof. Firmino
Mucavele, Chief Executive Officer, NEPAD
Secretariat formally presenting the Summary
of Conclusions and Recommendations at the
end of the Second Pan African Capacity
Building Forum to Hon. Luisa Dias Diogo,
Prime Minister of Mozambique
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Parallel Session II: Capacity
Building in the Context of the HIV-AIDS Pandemic — the
Issues, Challenges, Lessons, and Safety Nets. The main conclusions and recommendations
of this session included the following: recognizing that it is difficult to
change by diktat peoples’ sexual behavior. The key lies in empowering
citizens to make choices that protect them; capacity building interventions
within the context of HIV/AIDS should be long-term and span political, social
and economic dimensions of the crisis; primary health-care systems should be
strengthened to deal with such dimensions of the pandemic such as caring for
orphans, and child-headed households; the challenge of home-based care; and,
supporting grandparents in caring for orphaned dependents. The session cautioned
that power and gender relations are key covariates in of the spread of HIV/AIDS,
and that policymakers should recognize the critical role played by non-state
actors in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Parallel Session
III: Capacity
Building in Post-conflict African Countries — Strategies,
Lessons, and Guides to Interventions. The main conclusions and recommendations
of this session included the following: capacity building efforts should be
focused on preventing rather than managing conflict; in the event that a country
is in a conflict situation, emphasis should be placed on leadership and the
need to solve the legitimacy crisis; and, conflict situations throw into sharp
focus the capacity challenges of managing economic resources, governing effectively,
and enlisting the participation of non-state actors in the development process.
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The closing
session of the Second Pan African Capacity
Building Forum held at the Joaquim Alberto
Chissano International Conference Centre,
3 August 2007, Maputo, Mozambique (Chairperson
of the Closing Session). From left to right:
Mr. Dennis Potvin, Education, Environment & Governance,
Pan African Program, Canadian International
Development Agency (CIDA) representing
the Chair of the ACBF Board of Governors;
Mr. Manuel Chang, Honorable Minister of
Finance, Mozambique; H.E. Fernando da Piedade
Dias dos Santos, Prime Minister of the
Republic of Angola; Honorable Luisa Dias
Diogo, Prime Minister of Mozambique; H.E.
Benjamin William Mkapa, former President
of The United Republic of Tanzania; Dr.
Soumana Sako, ACBF Executive Secretary;
H.E. Dr. Maxwell M. Mkwezalamba, Commissioner
for Economic Affairs, African Union; and
standing, Professor Firmino Mucavele, Chief
Executive Officer, NEPAD presenting the
Report of the Forum.
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Plenary II: Recent Development
Experiences from China, India, Malaysia, and
South Korea (CIMK) — Some Lessons for Capacity
Building in Africa. The session highlighted the structural features of the economic growth and
structural transformation of CIMK countries, notably macroeconomic stability;
prudent exchange-rate policies that promoted export-led growth; financial
sector reforms that mobilized domestic savings, attracted foreign direct
investment and enhanced investment efficiency; and a sustained investment
in the social sectors to produce productive workers. The session noted the
need for African planners to be appreciative of the key role of the diaspora
in the
development of CIMK countries;
African countries should be aware that productivity
gains in agriculture have preceded or occurred
with episodes of rapid economic growth and structural
transformation; that in the CIMK countries, it
was leadership rather than democracy per se that
was key to their development; and, long-term
strategic planning is key to Africa’s development
pursuits, tempered with some pragmatism and a
willingness to reform and improve their economic
organization and institutions.
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The Prime Minister
of Mozambique, Hon. Luisa Dias Diogo, formally
closing the Second Pan African Capacity
Building Forum
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Parallel Session IV: Reforming
Technical Assistance and Strengthening Donor
Coordination in the Building of Sustainable Indigenous
Capacity in Africa — the
Results, Constraints, and Challenges. The session had the following conclusions:
enormous resources flow into Africa in the form of technical assistance but,
with little to show for it in terms of development results, hence the strong
need to develop indigenous capacity and to use technical assistance more
productively and wisely; African countries should develop capacity to question
the substance and form of technical assistance; and, ACBF has an important
role to play in donor coordination towards sustainable and responsive capacity
building on the Continent.
Parallel Session V: Knowledge
Management and Performance Measurement in Capacity
Building — a Review of Frameworks and Major Issues. The key message
in this session was the recognition that, given the dynamic and intangible
nature of knowledge management, any framework to build capacity in this area
necessarily needed to be flexible enough. The same framework would also crucially
need to capture, measure, monitor, and evaluate tacit knowledge.
Parallel Session VI: Gender
Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Africa’s
Development — Capacity Building Strategies and Programs. The session
noted that while the women’s movement had come a long way in Africa,
it was weakened by its dependence on donor support. Rather, a clarion call
was made to mainstream gender in Africa’s institutions and key policy
processes, noting the seminal success of gender budgeting in South Africa that
has touched off similar efforts in 14 other African countries.
In addition to the many observations
in the struggle towards gender equality in Africa,
the discussion generated many practical strategies
to enhance progress towards the same, including
the following, that: promoting gender in governance
should be recognized as a key upstream activity
to infuse dedicated champions of the cause at
the top echelons of society; and that capacity
building interventions should seek to address
the yawning gap in statistics documenting the
role of women in economic development.
The Forum came to an end on
3 August 2007 at a closing session presided over
by the Prime Minister of Mozambique, Hon. Luisa
Dias Diogo. At the session, Prof Firmino Mucavele,
Chief Executive Officer, NEPAD formally presented
to the Prime Minister a summary of the issues
discussed, conclusions reached and recommendations
put forward by the participants.
Dr. Toga McIntosh, Hon. Minister
of Planning and National development, Liberia
presented a vote of thanks on behalf of the participants,
and the Prime Minister finally brought the Second
Pan African capacity Building Forum to a close.
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