IMF’s Africa Training Institute (ATI) to resume in-person engagement on capacity development delivery to African countries.

• The steering Committee endorsed ATI’s FY23 work program and budget, including the hiring of additional administrative staff, while encouraging ATI to strengthen partnerships with CD providers in the region.
• The training center will sustain its efforts to close the unmet demand gap for training in the region, including through diversification of modalities of capacity development (CD) delivery and a mix of virtual, hybrid and blended engagement.

The 9th Steering Committee of the International Monetary Fund’s ATI met on June 8, 2022. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Sheku Bangura, Deputy Minister of Finance 1 of the Republic of Sierra Leone. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Chairperson of the Steering Committee (SC), on behalf of the SC, issued the following statement:

“Members and observers commended ATI for its nimble reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic-related travel and mobility restrictions by adapting its delivery of capacity development to the virtual environment and acting up on the recommendations of the 6th SC Meeting (March 29, 2019) to scale up its operations and ramp up the engagement on new priorities such as gender, climate change, digitalization, macroeconomics of pandemics, and governance.

The SC endorsed ATI’s proposed FY23 work plan, which continues to (i) emphasize training on resilience-building areas needed to ensure Sub-Saharan African countries are well prepared to cope with large shocks, (ii) prioritize countries in fragile situations—including through a pilot medium-term strategy to better coordinate training and technical assistance delivered to a fragile country’s central bank—and (iii) focus on exploring synergies between training and technical assistance and integrating priorities arising from IMF surveillance and lending in the region.

The SC also approved the hiring of additional administrative resources to help the center sustain the scope of its operations while resuming in-person engagement and keeping administrative staff workload within acceptable boundaries.

The SC noted that unmet training demand remains high, despite ATI’s efforts to boost supply and encouraged ATI to continue making use of the virtual mode of delivery, recognizing that virtual engagement alone cannot replace in-person engagement, considering the associated decline in learning gains and participant satisfaction. To help the center reap the benefits of both in-person and virtual modes of engagement, the SC instructed ATI to introduce hybrid and blended modalities of CD delivery. The SC also encouraged ATI to leverage partnerships with other training and CD providers in the region to help meet the high demand for training.

The SC reviewed and endorsed the budget estimates for FY23, noticed the recent progress in fundraising, and urged member countries to contribute to the budget for Phase II and help close the funding gap. Going forward, the SC asked for a more detailed presentation of budget parameters to enhance accountability.”

The 9th Steering Committee Meeting was attended by 78 officials of 12 contributing member-countries and representatives of contributing partners, including the European Investment Bank, the People’s Bank of China, South African Reserve Bank and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance. Observers such as the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management, European Union, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, West African Monetary Institute, Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa and Regional Multidisciplinary Centre of Excellence also participated in the meeting.

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