WAIFEM: The Emergence of a Capacity-Building Powerhouse

Introduction

For close to three decades now, the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM), has been making significant contributions towards the growth and development of its member-countries – Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and The Gambia – in particular and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) sub-region in general. The Institute has been making these contributions by developing competencies among members of staff of central banks, ministries of finance and economic planning, as well as other public sector and private institutions of its member-countries, in macroeconomic, public debt and financial services sector management.

As evident from its track record, WAIFEM has been delivering on its core mandate of building capacity for effective financial and economic management in its member-countries and the entire ECOWAS sub-region. From 1997 to June 2024, the Institute has executed a total of 951 programmes which attracted a princely 14,999 participants. By virtue of this superlative performance, therefore, WAIFEM has undisputedly emerged as a capacity-building powerhouse from its modest beginnings in 1996. And at the pace it is advancing, especially with regard to improved programme delivery and the expansion of its audience’s coverage, WAIFEM is bound to become the most patronized capacity-building institution in the sub-region.

WAIFEM was established by central banks of Anglophone West African countries in 1996 after consultations with a number of multilateral institutions with the mandate to bridge the gaps noticed in the comparable activities and workings of central banks of Anglophone West African countries. The gaps existedin the following areas:

• Low capacity for macroeconomic modelling, forecasting and policy analysis which constrained the core economic management institutions in making projections, simulating the effects of external and internal shocks, formulating policies and making policy adjustment
• Limited expertise in addressing policy challenges of regional integration
• Absence of well-defined comprehensive capacity-building plans for economic and financial management
• Weak capacity for active reserve management, especially in foreign exchange dealing, fund management, development, and implementation of investment policies and oversight mechanisms
• Poor technical skills for dealing with the emerging complex financial architecture, especially in financial system surveillance, money, and capital market operations
• Weak human capacity for external debt management and lack of comprehensive debt database, including administrative delays in making debt service payments due to poor and uncoordinated institutional arrangements for managing public debt; and
• Inadequate capacity to integrate poverty reduction programmes into the budget.

Given the gaps in the activities and workings of central banks of Anglophone West African countries in the 1990s, WAIFEM was therefore established and mandated to build, sustain and maintain intellectual and human capital capacity repository for the West African Anglophone central banks. The tasks enshrined in the mandate required building through regular trainings, up-scaling and maintaining the intellectual and human capital capacity for effective modern management of the central banks in Anglophone West Africa. And this was what WAIFEM has been doing since its establishment in 1996.

The track record of WAIFEM in executing its mandate covers the following areas:

• Plan a curriculum of courses and seminars designed to meet the training and capacity-building needs of senior officials and other professional-level staff of central banks, ministries of finance, economy and planning, and other government agencies involved in the formulation and implementation of macroeconomic policies
• Organize, coordinate, and conduct such courses and seminars, mobilizethe required human and financial resources, and make the necessary arrangements with the central bank (or other government bodies, when appropriate) for the participation of those officials best suited to receive the training
• Act as a centre for the collection and exchange of information on central banking and macroeconomic policies in the region, as well as on available consultancy resources and training activities, to make such information available to the national authorities and to liaise with central banks or ministries requiring research, advisory, or training services and providers of such services
• Ensure that its activities are adequately financed by contributions from the participating central banks, as well as from external sources of income, and to maintain a proper accounting
• Sponsor or conduct seminars, training courses, and consultative fora on central banking and macroeconomic issues
• support, design, and implement programmes for the training of suitably qualified staff drawn from the region;
• publish and disseminate information on central banking and macroeconomic policies in the region
• Identify, design, and promote networks of researchers, analysts, managers, and professional associations
• Collaborate with national, bilateral, or multilateral training and relevant institutions that have similar mandate
• Carry out other activities that may advance its purpose.

However, as a result of both economic and political turbulence that the Anglophone West African countries went through a few years after its establishment, a reappraisal of its mandate was carried out in 1999.  In 2000, the institute embarked on a new journey which provided the foundation and template for its current holistic capacity-building approach adopted in the medium-term capacity-building programme. The objectives of the new template are to:

• Strengthen capacity to manage public and public-guaranteed external debt and domestic central government debt, including contingent liabilities
• Improve the skills and knowledge required for managing the development, regulation, and supervision of the financial sector, including banks and non-bank financial institutions, money and capital markets, and strengthen capacity for the management of international reserves
• Improve the skills and knowledge required for macroeconomic policy analysis and management.

These have now become the core mandate of the Institute. To be sure, it has been effectively and efficiently pursuing tis mandate since 2000.

Target Audience

Initially, the target audience of WAIFEM’s programmes was just the central banks in Anglophone West Africa. Over the years, however, the Institute has not only expanded the coast of its activities to other state institutions in Anglophone West Africa, but to other countries outside the Anglophone West Africa that are inexorably attracted to its activities. The state institutions include central banks, ministries of finance, budget, and economic planning, ministries of development, statistics offices, accountant general departments, debt management offices, parliaments, revenue commissions, sub-national entities, other public and private sector agencies involved in macroeconomic and financial policy formulation and management such as private sector institutions like commercial banks, and the mass media.

WAIFEM’s capacity-building activities have also widened to include Angola, Ethiopia, Sudan, Eswatini, Malawi, and countries in Latin America.

On many occasions, the Institute’s training programmes have not only consisted of senior and executive officials of state institutions mentioned above, but they have also come to include the very top officials such as governors of central banks, ministers, permanent secretaries, and legislators. This is due to the high quality grade of the programmes mounted as a result of rapidly changing global environment which requires high-level interaction, dialogue and exchange of latest ideas and information in the global economic and financial environment among officials from countries facing similar challenges.

Activities of WAIFEM in Capacity-Building

The core function of WAIFEM is to build human capacity through regular training programmes for its member-states and others who demand such trainings. The Institute adopts a holistic and integrated approach in carrying out these activitiesin its service delivery methodologies. In this regard, the Institute not only concentrates on human resource development, which is one dimension of capacity building, but also plays an active part in developing appropriate institutional and organizational structures, systems, and procedures for policy formulation and execution of economic management functions.

The complementary tools used by WAIFEM for the achievement of its objectives include short-term training courses and national and regional training events/workshops, advisory to follow-up missions. Others are institutional management missions, fellows development schemes, training for trainers scheme and attachment programmes, distance learning programmes and best practices studies. These programmes are elaborated below.

• Demand Assessment Missions (DAMs)are undertaken to identify and articulate the specific needs of the member-countries for capacity-building assistance in the various aspects of debt, macroeconomic and financial management.
• Regional and inter-regional workshops are organized to facilitate the exchange of information on best practices in debt, macroeconomic, and financial sector management. Regional workshops are also organized to elucidate new developments, new methodology, and address common problems and challenges or similar capacity-building needs.
• National workshops provide specialised country-specific customized training programmes designed to address identified needs in the areas of debt, macroeconomic and financial management. They are conducted at the national level and provide opportunity to train a wider circle of nationals than is possible under a regional workshop.
• Training for Trainers Courses (TFT) are designed to develop a pool of regional and national experts in order to ensure the sustainability of the skills and training methodologies impacted to regional experts so that they can, in turn, transfer their skills to their colleagues at the national level.
• Follow-up Missions are undertaken to provide intensive assistance on specific aspects of debt, macroeconomic and financial sector management.
• Institutional Management Missions (IMMs) are designed to support and strengthen the legal and institutional aspects of macroeconomic, debt, and financial sector management.
• Intensive Assistance through an in-country advisor provides intensive training and institutional capacity building to address specific human, institutional or organizational capacity needs.
• The Debt Adviser Programme which is a technical assistance programme for debt recording contributes to sustainable development and strengthen debt management capacity, especially in debt recording countries of WAIFEM-member central banks. The adviser provides user support, troubleshooting, and capacity building for the Meridian Debt Recording and Management System (DRMS), which is designed by the Commonwealth Secretariat. It also provides activities related to training country personnel on a rapid response basis.
• Distance/e-Learning Programme (DLP) complements the traditional courses and workshops and facilitates development of national and regional expertise especially in debt management strategy.
• Fellows Development Scheme aims at developing, through individual customized training and work attachments, a cadre of sub-regional experts, which, apart from strengthening national capacity, would subsequently be employed for short-term contractual assignment by WAIFEM as trainer and experts for advisory missions.
• Executive Fora (Advocacy Seminars) focus on the governance dimension of economic policy implementation and seek to build consensus as well as create awareness at the highest level of government and other stakeholders in the economy, such as the mass media and the civil society. The seminars are therefore designed to empower national legislatures, mass media and the civil society organizations and assist them to effectively participate in economic policy dialogue, oversight function or economic/financial issues reporting, as the case may be. Legal officials in ministries of justice are also encouraged to participate in order to sharpen their knowledge and skills for drafting economic and financial legislations as well as vetting loan agreements.
• Consultancy services are provided on demand from time to time by WAIFEM for the benefit of user institutions. Also ad hoc support services are provided for specific capacity needs on any identified debt, macroeconomic or financial sector related activities. Other tailored “Information Products” emanating from WAIFEM include website development, academic journals, newsletters, books, etc. through which best practices on specific issues relating to macroeconomic and financial management are disseminated.

Partnership Development

WAIFEM partners with other world class capacity building organizations to achieve its lofty objectives. With the partnerships, the Institute is able to bring world class experts in any field to facilitate its training activities. Thus, the institute has found it extremely beneficial to implement some of its capacity building events in collaboration with technical partners since its inception.

The Institute’s technical partners included the International Monetary Fund (IMF), especially the Institute for Capacity Development, the Statistics Department of the Fund, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), Debt Relief International (DRI), Development Finance International (DFI), Commonwealth Secretariat (COMSEC), Bank of England, United States Treasury Department (USTD), The African Legal Support Facility (ALSF) Capital LLC, and Dresdner Bank of Germany.  The Institute also collaborates with regional organizations such as the Macroeconomic and       has been remarkable. This is evident in the initiatives and programmes which have resulted in proper public debt management in the institute’s member countries. Some of these initiatives and programmes are:

• The production of national capacity building plans for debt management: Following the series of IMMs and workshops executed, all the constituent countries of WAIFEM have produced frameworks for their national capacity building plans.  The output from the missions and regional workshops included up-to-date priorities for filling capacity gaps in the individual countries in the institutional, organizational and manpower skills for debt management.
• An improved legal framework and appropriate institutional and organizational arrangements for debt management:  Although the process is ongoing, all WAIFEM member countries have put in place adequate systems, procedures and benchmarks for debt management.
• Strengthened capacity for basic external debt management functions, including debt recording, disbursement procedures and debt servicing: All WAIFEM member countries, except Liberia, have computerized their external debt data-base, with reliable, comprehensive and validated data; regular debt data reports tuned to users’ needs; and well-organized documentation systems for loans and rescheduling agreements and disbursements and payment statements. Systems to ensure the prompt disbursement of loan tranches and timely debt service payments to avoid penalty payments and damage to countries’ credibility have been put in place.  Consequently, The Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone now have credible debt data-base and use the latest CS-DRMS 2000+ through collaborative arrangements with WAIFEM and COMSEC.  Nigeria has streamlined its institutional framework for debt management by creating a debt management office.  Besides, the more reliable and up-to-date data base in WAIFEM-member countries have allowed for the maintenance of prompt debt servicing, and easier communication with creditors for prompt disbursements, among others.
• Strengthened capacity for debt sustainability analysis and the development of national debt strategies: All WAIFEM-member countries, except Liberia, have significantly improved capacity for the analysis of long-term macroeconomic sustainability of their public external and domestic debt. All the countries have benefited from external debt relief and MDRI and have new external financing under the framework of poverty reduction.  The countries also have capacity to conduct DSA including that based on World Bank/IMF framework for low-income countries (DSF-LIC).

The DSA workshops conducted by WAIFEM in The Gambia, Ghana, and Sierra Leone assisted them to access the HIPC facility and advanced to completion point.  The Institute’s various capacity building interventions have also assisted these countries in constituting teams which are capable of updating the DSA with minimal external assistance.

• Strengthened capacity for renegotiation of external debt and for new borrowing:Key officials in each of the countries had a good grasp of the terms of debt renegotiation in the Paris Club and other creditor framework (London Club, multilateral creditors, non-OECD bilateral creditors), as well as those of other debt reduction mechanisms such as debt conversion and buy-backs.  Systems have been put in place to enable these officials to continue receiving up-to-date information on the evolving debt relief terms being offered by creditors and precedents set by other countries’ debt relief agreements, as well as data on international interest rates.  The approach being canvassed by WAIFEM is that each country should have a holistic team of negotiators on an ongoing basis with financial, economic, legal, and negotiating skills.
• Strengthened awareness of debt management policy issues, among senior government officials, legislators, the media and other opinion leaders: Through ongoing regional workshops and fora, the Institute has created awareness in a growing number of legislators on the importance of debt management.  Similarly, some media practitioners (electronic and print) received the necessary training that will assist them to improve on their ability to analyse key economic concepts and policy issues relating to debt management.

Financial Sector Management

The activities of WAIFEM from 1997 to date include high-level financial sector programmes to further empower the banking and financial sector in its human capital pool in view of its high-level volatility and mobility. This has enabled the banking and financial sector to sustain its human capital pool over the years. Some of the bespoke programmes and their outcomes are:

• Development of a critical mass of skilled officials for financial sector management: The courses/workshops on banking supervision, money laundering, capital market development, etc. have contributed to the improvement in financial sector management capabilities of the senior/executive officials of member countries’ central banks.  These programmes have also enabled the officials to keep abreast of the current developments in the financial sector. They have also led to an improvement in the strategic understanding, at the executive level of central banks and governments, of financial sector policies formulation and implementation.
• Development of national capacity building plans for the management of international reserves: Faithful implementation of these plans has culminated in a programme of staff attachment by some central banks to the foreign operations departments of others for the purpose of enhanced practical skills acquisition by relevant officials.
• Improved legal framework, appropriate institutional and organizational arrangements and upgraded human resource for international reserves management in the sub-region: The process of improving legal framework and appropriate institutional and organizational arrangements is ongoing in all WAIFEM member central banks with a view to further strengthening the reserves management function in the sub-region.
• Under the impetus of WAIFEM capacity building interventions, appropriate strategies/ policies/guidelines/benchmarks for investment of international reserves, are being put in place in most of the member countries.
• Strengthened front and middle office functions in central banks for trading, market analysis and portfolio management are now in place in most member countries.
• Strengthened back office functions in central banks for the processing and settlement of foreign exchange deals, accounting systems and databases also being developed etc.

Macroeconomic Management

The macroeconomic management capacity building programmes especially for central banks and other state institutions that have to do with macroeconomic management on daily basis are not left behind in the training schedules of the Institute. Thus, the Institute’s score board in this critical domain shows an impressive achievement:

• A critical mass of skilled officials for macroeconomic management and policy analysis in relevant government departments and central banks
• Improved strategic understanding at the executive levels of the institutions responsible for macroeconomic policy
• Improved understanding of macroeconomic policy issues among parliamentarians and the media.

Publications by the Institute

The publication unit of the Institute is growing by leaps and bounds. The publication unit and all its publications so far including those collected from other publishers across the world are making the Institute an emerging knowledge powerhouse on the continent. The publication unit has placed the Institute on an unrivaled position as the foremost knowledge depository of its kind in the areas of its core specialisations on the continent. Scholars and researchers not only from the continent but also from all over the world are trooping to the Institute on annual basis for research purposes in its vast library and publication unit. This has clearly positioned the Institute as a modern knowledge powerhouse that can only be compared to any of the Ivy League universities in the Western countries.

The Institute publishes an annual report, which, among other things, provides information on developments in the global economy, developments in the economies of the member banks’ countries, and a summary of training programmes, administrative developments, and audited financial accounts of the Institute during the year. The Institute also publishes an annual report on its training programmes. Also published from time to time under separate titles are the proceedings of workshops and training programmes of the institute.

A quarterly newsletter is published to inform member banks, participants, and other related bodies of new developments at the Institute. A directory of participants and resource persons is also published after each training programme to facilitate the development of networks among the Institute’s alumni.

Also, the Institute publishes a brochure yearly, showing details of courses it intends to offer in that particular year. The procedure for nominations for the courses is spelt out in the brochure.

The Institute plans to publish occasional paper series to create a forum for the dissemination and exchange of views on economic and financial policy issues in the sub-region.