Seminar of the Chief Financial Officers of African Cities
25 to 28 September 2013, Rabat (Morocco)
From 25 to 28 September 2013 was held in Rabat, at Chellah Hotel – on the sidelines of the 4th UCLG World Congress -, the first International Seminar of the CFOs of African cities
, organized by UCLG Africa in partnership with the UCLG Local Finance and Development Committee, with a view to promoting peer learning and improving significantly the financial management of local governments in Africa.
This seminar pursued several objectives. The first objective was to mobilize local finance practitioners in Africa so as to involve them in the setting up of an observatory on local finance in Africa, which would serve as a system of reference at the national, regional and international levels. The establishment of this observatory requires an agreement on the system of collecting, updating and analysis of the financial data from the local governments with a view to publishing notably ratio guides. The observatory will also help to conduct a comparative approach promoting benchmarking of performances in the management of local finance in the different regions of Africa. The seminar enabled participants to gain training in the use of PEFA (Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability) as a financial analysis tool for the local governments, and whose use was recommended for the major African cities.
Furthermore, the seminar explored the different modalities to prepare the local governments to access borrowing and the capital markets.
At the end of the proceedings, the CFOs of African cities decided to set up a network termed: AFRICA FINET (Network of CFOs and United Cities and Local Governments of Africa), and adopted the Rules and Regulations. They also set up a Bureau whose President is Ms. Ouafae MOUNIATI, Chief Financial Officer of Marrakech, Morocco.
The official launching of the Network was scheduled to take place on 03 October 2013, at the UCLG Africa stand within the institutional pavilion of the Rabat 2013 Exhibition, during the presentation ceremony of the publication on the evaluation of the institutional environment of African cities co-edited by Cities Alliance and UCLG Africa.
