ACBF signs Grant Agreements with the West African Economic Monetary Union (WAEMU) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

On July 27th, 2007, the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) signed a grant agreement to the tune of US$2.0 million in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The grant is earmarked to implement a Regional Public Procurement Reform project for WAEMU member states in order to set up good public finance management principles.

In June 2000, at the request of the Conference of Heads of State and Government of WAEMU, the Council of Ministers of the Union adopted a “Code of Transparency in Public Finance Management”. This Code invites member states to, among other things, take action to establish more transparent national public finance management and to modernize national public procurement systems. Based upon the guidelines of this transparency code, a regional public procurement reform programme for WAEMU member states was established in 2002. This programme was prepared and approved by the Commission with the technical and financial support of the African Development Bank and the World Bank for the 2002-2005 implementation period.

This first phase of the programme, led to the adoption of the public procurement directives in December 2005 by the WAEMU Commission. It gave rise to i) the preparation and adoption of community regulations by the Council of Ministers of the Union on 9th December 2005; ii) the preparation of an inventory of public procurement system reforms in WAEMU member states and iii) the identification of public procurement management tools and functions to be performed by the Commission.

The ACBF grant will contribute to the consolidation of the outputs from the first phase of the project by a) effectively implementing the community regulations adopted by WAEMU, b) incorporating these regulations into the national legislations of the eight member states of WAEMU, c) establishing a sub-regional information system; d) building the public procurement capacity of the different economic operators in the sub-region and e) building capacity of WAEMU, whose role is to monitor the implementation of the regulations.

This project falls under ACBF core competence areas of “Financial Management and Accountability” and Strengthening of Regional Economic Communities. Mr Soumaila Cissé, the President of the WAEMU Commission signed the Grant Agreement on behalf of WAEMU, while Dr. Soumana Sako signed on behalf of ACBF. The project is being supported in collaboration with ADB, BOAD and OIF.