MEFMI in brief

The Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa (MEFMI) is a regionally owned institute with 13 member countries currently: Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

MEFMI seeks to contribute towards sustainable poverty reduction process and improvement of governance in the key areas of macro-economic and financial
management in the public sector.

Macro-economic stability and financial sector soundness, efficiency and stability form essential parts of:

(a) preconditions for rapid and sustained economic growth,
(b) good governance.

Economic growth accompanied by fairly equitable distribution are means towards steady socio-economic development which in turn result in :
• sustained poverty reduction process,
• the general rise in human development index (as defined by the UNDP).

Realisation of:
• sound, efficient and stable financial sector,
• stable macro-economy with strong and sustained growth,
• as well as fairly equitable distribution,

Require:

• skillful design of relevant policies ( i.e. relevant and accurate timeliness, proper design, implementation, monitoring, and review of policies),
• competent and efficient execution/management of those policies,
• positive attitude of relevant officials towards their work.Commensurate Human and Institutional Capacity are needed in order to meet those
sought after goals and objectives.

MEFMI strives to address this expressed challenge through:

• sustainable human and institutional capacity,
• fostering of best practices,
• strengthening positive attitude towards work and nurturing motivation among professionals.

The scope of MEFMI has focus on:
• Macro-economic Management,
• Financial Sector Management,
• Sovereign Debt Management, all these three areas are covered in their broad context.

The MEFMI target institutions are:
• Ministries of Finance,
• Ministries of Economic Development and Planning or equivalent,
• Central Banks,
• Other public institutions that interface with these core institutions.

The MEFMI target groups have so far been:
• Ministers of Finance and of Planning and Economic Development and equivalent,
• Secretaries to the Treasury and Permanent Secretaries for Finance and equivalent,
• Central Bank Governors,
• Heads of Departments/Divisions, senior officials, junior to senior professionals in all these target institutions.

Modes of Delivery of MEFMI’s products and services have been: - courses/workshops for professionals,

• seminars for senior professionals,
• retreats for heads of relevant departmanets/ divisions/units, - forum series for executive level Participants,
• selected attachments to exemplary institutions, all the above either at the regional or country level.

These efforts are supplemented with:
• country missions ( for on the job guidance, information update, needs update),
• development of needed instruments ( manuals, methodologies, frameworks etc.),
• development of Fellows ( fast track programme to produce world class experts among outstanding professionals in relevant client institutions) which is capacity that creates more capacity

• training of trainers in carefully selected areas ( which another effort to build capacity that creates more capacity);

MEFMI has maintained, and will maintain, its posture of:

• Being user driven (inclusion in programme preparation), - needs based offerings ( i.e.based on expressed needs),
• offering highly applied capacity building activities,
• delivering region specific ( i.e. customized) activities,
• using pooled regional expertise for the benefit of all ( i.e. Fellows, and trained trainers,selected senior officials and other experts in the region)
• establishing and maintaining a wide network of technical co-operating partner
institutions world Wide,
• maintaining a slim, flexible and efficient Secretariat.
Periodic ‘Reviews’ ( Mid- and End- of Phase) to assess the impact of MEFMI’s capacity building efforts and ‘Needs Assessment’ exercises aimed at establishing capacity building needs in client/stakeholder institutions, have been a feature in MEFMI and will continue to be.