In early April, a new cohort of budget reformers officially embarked on the 2024 edition of the Building Public Finance Capabilities (BPFC) programme. Country-teams from Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, and for the first time, Kenya and Mauritius, are participating in the 12-month action-learning programme aimed at building capabilities to tackle local public finance problems.

After an initial 5-week online course, the country-teams gathered in Pretoria to attend an initial framing workshop from the 10-13 June. The workshop provided an opportunity to further unpack the pressing public finance problems the country-teams are confronted with and identify the space for change within complex incentive systems and political economy constraints.

Based on existing evidence and through facilitated discussions, the 4 country-teams identified the pressing public finance problems that are most likely going to mobilise support from within and outside their institutions. Team Mauritius will be tackling the persistent delays in the delivery of capital projects, with visible effects in the provision of infrastructure, particularly water in the country. Amidst mounting fiscal pressures, Team Kenya is looking at tackling inefficiencies in cash management systems and processes, to optimise the value of cash and borrowing. Similarly, Team Côte d'Ivoire is tackling the growing fiscal pressures from increasing debt service costs, compared to the more limited ability to collect revenue. Finally, Team Guinea will be expanding on the work of their Guinean colleagues from the previous cohort, to understand and tackle the key drivers leading to the accumulation of arrears.

After identifying entry points and actionable ideas, the country-teams will now embark in an action-learning process, where they will deepen their understanding of these problems by gathering more data and evidence and importantly, wide stakeholder views on the problem and its causes. With the emergence of new learning, country-teams will also be able to identify and experiment, iterate and adapt localised ideas for solutions. Throughout the process, each country-team will have the support of a CABRI coach, who regularly meets with team members to take stock of the progress made and just as important, facilitate reflections on the emergence of new learnings that may hold bearing in how the problem should be tackled.

In the midst of ongoing fiscal pressures, general elections and increasing social demands for service delivery and accountability, taking a pragmatic approach, and going beyond technical fixes will be necessary to sustainably address these problems. This will require working beyond siloed divisional mandates for country-teams to be able to identify interconnected gaps in process, systems and more earnestly, people (and by extension, their intricate incentives and motivations) and how they relate to the problems.

We look forward to gathering the country-teams back in September for a Mid-term review of their progress and to facilitate further peer exchanges.