As we enter the New Year, we reflect on a significant milestone: 20 years since CABRI’s inaugural conference in December 2004, which was organised through a collaborative effort amongst early country budget reformers. The conference set the foundation for all subsequent CABRI events which have consistently focused on addressing real-world public financial management (PFM) challenges faced by African nations. The core audience remains the heads of Country Budgets from various African countries, or their official delegates who meet to share PFM reform options that are grounded in hard evidence that demonstrates improved PFM functionality and development impact.

Looking ahead to 2025, we also mark the completion of the work of the first year of our five-year Strategic Plan for 2024-2029, which began CABRI’s Expansion phase. As the CABRI network of African senior budget officials, we continue to engage and learn together about how to improve our interactions within the network and with our partners and to refine the evidence-based methodologies used to tackle PFM challenges that are prevalent in the African continent.

In this quarterly Newsletter we reflect on CABRI's ongoing work for enhancing PFM in Africa through collaboration, evidence-based reforms, and the use and integration of digital tools, while also reflecting on its historical achievements and future goals.

Over the course of 2024, and through our new digital PFM programme, we have reaffirmed that digital reform of PFM is unavoidable. Digital development will certainly be a perennial reform mode of working. The question remains, under what circumstances are digital PFM reforms desirable and effective? What does this mean for the development of efficient digital tools for PFM, and more broadly for improvements to higher-level PFM functionality and future or ongoing country policy reform? Through the furtherance of this work, we aim to overcome the digital divide, focusing on what will work for Digital PFM across Africa. As will be apparent in forthcoming CABRI publications, we exercise purposeful awareness that touting digitalisation or transparency simply in the form of more detailed technical information, without any attempt at PFM policy reform, will not suffice. It will perpetuate the idea that public sentiment is most likely adversarial relative to government public service provision. CABRI’s unique perspective will remain on ensuring that digital approaches are anchored on evidence-based real-world PFM reform improvements that provide better country public services and simultaneously, contribute to a more positive public sentiment.

This philosophy in our approach is consistent across all our programmes. For the upcoming final quarter of our financial year, key highlights are that CABRI will:

• undertake a Building Public Finance Capabilities programme focused on addressing PFM problems related to nutrition in The Gambia, Ghana and Liberia;
• undertake an Institutional Capabilities Building Programme focused on support for strengthening the general institutional capacity of PFM systems to enable better prevention of international illicit financial flows in four African countries;
• update the Budgets in Africa repository, an essential CABRI knowledge product of budget publication documents from countries across Africa, which aims to facilitate access to information on how governments spend public resources and
• continue the data collection for the Africa Debt Monitor, a contemporary and third edition of key country metrics and institutional arrangements.

CABRI’s Expansion phase will also continue its programmatic work on health, and we are excited to revisit PFM in agriculture as an enabler for economic growth, with important linkages for gender and employment advancement considerations. Of course, the Digital PFM work continues and remains a key strategic area for our member countries - not just as a enabler of greater PFM efficiency and improvement in public sentiment, but also as a way to better explore broader linkages with the economy through common standards, approaches and platforms.

In closing 2024 it would be remiss of me not to reflect on CABRI’s successes. Most notably our in-person events, including the policy dialogue on PFM as Enabler of Health Facility Autonomy held in Mauritius, and more recently our International Conference on Public Finance in the Digital Era in South Africa, hosted together with ODI Global. In addition to the conference attendance by the CABRI senior budget officials’ network, also in attendance were notable academics, international organisations and think tanks, and the CABRI Management Committee welcomed the Honourable Seedy Keita, the Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs of The Gambia.

The Minister’s contributions to both the technical aspects of country Digital PFM and the broader economy-wide political endorsement were insightful and affirmed CABRI’s ongoing work from the perspective of African countries. The success of this event is also reflected by some of the analytical metrics: over 100 in-person participants, close to 600 virtual registrations, LinkedIn followers increased by 72 percent and there was an increase of 25 percent overall in CABRI social media users.

CABRI's Strategic Expansion phase is progressing in alignment with the shared aspirations of its member countries, emphasising the collaborative development of public financial management (PFM) reform initiatives within the African peer network. This approach remains true to the vision of the founding members and their groundbreaking efforts from 20 years ago.

African countries that are not yet members of CABRI are eligible and are invited to contact us soonest, so that you may join formally. Other stakeholders within the broader Public Finance Management community are also welcome to make direct contact with us.