NAN-H-27
Capacity
By Kingsley Okoye
Abuja, Mar 5,2017(NAN) The African Capacity Building Foundation Fund,(ACBF) says it has so far spent 700 million dollars to develop the capacities of Nigerian public institutions and other institutions in African in its 26 years existence.
The Executive Secretary of ACBF, Prof. Emmanuel Nnadozie, who said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday, added that the effort were geared toward effective policy formulation and implementation.
Nnadozie also told NAN that the money was used in providing training for Nigerian public institutions and other 44 African countries.
ACBF is an organisation established by African governments and their development partners to help build sustainable human and institutional capacity for good governance and development management.
He said the need to train personnel of public institutions became necessary, given the capacity gaps inherent in most public institutions in among government of African nations.
He also told NAN that the amount could not be compared to what was required to close capacity and skills gaps in the continent.
“We spend over 700million dollars which is far cry from what is estimated to be what is needed to make a mark on capacity gap.
“It cuts across all areas of capacity enhancement in 45 African countries. ‘’For us, a whole lot more is needed because the gap is significant and it is getting more complicated by the day as we can see.
“It cuts across institutional strengthening because institutional capacity is actually a very important area,” he said.
Nnadozie also said that the foundation had been involved in providing soft capacity training on leadership, value system, mind set change, financial management, among other areas of capacity building programmes.
He said that Nigeria had benefited significantly from the support by ACBF
“One good thing is that, Nigeria was one of the founding members of ACBF.There were 12 African countries on the table in 1991 when ACBF was created and Nigeria was one of them.
“ Nigeria has also benefited more than what it has contributed to ACBF, it is a long history of projects created since we started.
‘’For example, the West African institute for Financing Economic Management (WAIFEM), helping Nigeria and Anglophone sub-region to build capacity of their peoples in Finance Ministries and Central Banks to do better jobs.
“Within Nigeria, one important and shining example of our success is the National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS), Abuja.
‘’Many people may not know the history, but with a small funding that was provided to the National Assembly some years ago by ACBF, we see the result today.
‘’NILS is a full institute that forms the back bone of the National Assembly,’’he said.
According to him; the ACBF does not only provide funding, it also build capacity for managing the funds and as well as the financial system for accountability .
He said that the foundation was also providing capacity training on how best to effectively utilse resources, providing monitoring and evaluating techniques to strengthen the institutions for better performance.(NAN)
KC/DUA
Edited by Dada Ahmed