Capacity development for Natural Resources management

Launch of the third Africa Capacity Indicators 

Report (ACIR 2013), Accra 22nd March 2013

25 March 2013. The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) has officially launched its third Africa Capacity Indicators Report (ACIR 2013) focusing of capacity development for Natural Resources.

The 2013 edition focuses on the capacity development for Natural resources Management in 44 Africa countries. The report outlines that, “If countries are to better address the nexus of fragility, agricultural transformation and food security and natural resource management, then more countries need to invest in strategy, training and innovation.” The previous two reports of 2011 and 2012 focussed on Fragile States and Agricultural Transformation and Food Security respectively.

The 2013 Report focuses on what African countries need to do individually and collectively to achieve effective management and good governance of the continent’s natural resource wealth. It covers both renewable and non-renewable endowments, with specific reference to forests, land, water, solid minerals, and petroleum resources and offers analysis of the critical perspectives and contemporary academic and policy debates on the natural resource value chain, including emerging issues such as climate change and green economy. The Report highlights many positive country experiences that include among others:

• Liberia’s achievements in the forest sector—utilizing policy formulation, institution building, and operational responses to curb corruption and insecurity and reducing transnational illicit timber trade;
• Sierra Leone’s remarkable progress by putting in place relatively effective institutions and realizing economic growth, which has been driven by natural resources, including iron ore;
• Mozambique’s transformation of its forestry sector, including canceling or reducing the land area of 1500 investor contracts due to non-compliance with their investment plan;
• Ethiopia’s laudable efforts at building capacity for the staff of higher education institutions in the area of natural resource management and eco-tourism; and
• Angola’s and Nigeria’s launching of Sovereign Wealth Funds.

Published on 22 Mar 2013 This video interview was filmed at the EuropeAid Infopoint where Frannie Léautier gave a presentation on the role of African think tanks in policy and transformation in Africa. Ms. Léautier is the Executive Secretary of the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF). In this interview she speaks about how the ACBF is involved in agriculture and what they are doing to support women in agriculture.

 

Background:
The ACIR’s are produced by the Africa Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), which has for the past 22 years being supports academic institutions such as Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), the University of Ghana and in others across Africa to train a critical mass of skilled civil servants who now constitute over 30% of East and West Africa’s skilled human resource in public administration and policy management.

ACBF also sponsors 39 think tanks across Africa, including Centre for Economic Policy Analysis (CEPA), Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG), GhanaNet all in Ghana, and also the African Women’s Development Fund, and the African Association of Universities, which are both regional bodies headquartered in Ghana.

ACBF, with headquarters based in Harare, Zimbabwe, was set up by 39 (now 45) African countries in 1991 to help African countries transform their economies through effective policy making, analysis, monitoring, evaluation and tracking to ensure that the various economies draw optimum benefits.