The Macroeconomic & Governance Division of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) held a four day series of capacity development training workshops for Burkina Faso on an Integrated Planning and Reporting Toolkit (IPRT) from October 4-7 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
IPRT is a tool developed by ECA to assist member states with various activities related to planning, including but not limited to mapping their national development plan with SDGs and Agenda 2063, identify priorities, reports and monitoring and evaluation.
Abel Some, Secretary General of Burkina Faso’s ministry of economy, finance and development, thanked ECA for conducting the training and for the interest it has shown to the country.
“After four working days, your discussions confirmed the relevance and importance of holding such a training course and the need to further strengthen the process by appropriating the content of the communications made and taking charge of the process,” said Mr Some.
At the opening of the training, Bartholomew Armah, ECA’s Director of Macroeconomics and Governance, thanked the government of Burkina Faso for inviting ECA to organize the training despite the difficulties imposed on countries by the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said the IPRT training intended to provide participants with a deeper understanding of the functionalities of the Tool including alignment, data entry, data uploading, progress tracking and reporting. IPRT seeks to support countries planning processes by making it possible to align national plans with national priorities as well as regional and global commitments like Agenda 2063 and the 2030 development agenda.
“The timing of this training is therefore ideal for Burkina Faso since it is occurring when your new National Development Plan is being launched,” said Mr Armah, adding that once the national development plans (NDP) data is uploaded into the system, the IPRT can be used to validate the alignment of the national plan with the 2030 Agenda and the AUC Agenda 2063.
IPRT can be deployed to generate an alignment report which will indicate in percentages, the level of alignment at the Goal, target and indicator level.
The ECA Director said IPRT is being configured to make the tracking of performance on the indicators of your National development plan more user-friendly. So on one platform you can see the level of alignment and the performance of your plan.
“We are also working on including a module on the sources of financing for the NDP. This way you can link your IPRT priorities to the sources of financing. This will make it possible to assess whether resources are appropriately deployed to national objectives,” noted Mr Armah.
“The cost of borrowing is an important determinant of whether a country’s debt will be sustainable. Going forward, blending public concessionary funds with private funds will be an important leveraging mechanism for countries. This needs to be taken into account in the planning functions.”
He observed that the unprecedented events caused by the pandemic make it even “more important to strengthen our planning capacities. The IPRT can contribute to this objective and as we continue to innovate on the IPRT we count on your input and views about how to make these innovations serve your interests and needs better.”
At the end of the training Mr Armah appreciated the team that participated in the training for their dedication and commitment to the training exercise.
“I am impressed by the quality of engagement and the interactive nature of the training. Indeed, the questions you have posed demonstrated the depth of your understanding of the IPRT and your desire to make it an even better tool that responds to your development planning needs,” said Armah.
To ensure the importance of institutionalizing the IPRT to ensure sustainability, Mr Armah said an IPRT focal person will be appointed and an IPRT Team to maintain continuity of the training and advance the applications of the toolkit in Burkina Faso. The team will closely work with ECA’s subregional IPRT consultant, Issiaka Sombie, and Burkina Faso’s General Director of Economy and planning.
Specifically, the IPRT Team in Burkina Faso are supposed to use the IPRT template, upload the results framework of the national development plan of Burkina Faso into the IPRT; complete data entry at goal, target and indicator levels of the national development plan; using the IPRT template, complete the alignment of the national development plan with SDGs and Agenda 2063; populate targets for each indicator; organize training sessions on the implementation of IPRT; track the progress of SDGs and Agenda 2063; coordinate and organize training on the implementation of IPRT; popularize the IPRT through advocacy in the country; prepare tools and materials for advocacy; prepare progress reports in the implementation of the IPRT; submit reports to ECA team; facilitate and organize meetings with government officials in Burkina Faso.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).
