The stature and role of AfDB in Africa today cannot be overstated. Indeed, the Bank’s establishment gave a boost to the role of ECA in expanding independent Africa’s international cooperation. Its establishment set the stage for the emergence of a flurry of other African institutions in the banking, finance, industry, trade and economic development policy spheres in whose establishment and growth ECA was also a pioneer.
Notable among these other institutions in the financial and banking sector, which continues to have a big impact on the African continent today, is the Association of African Central Banks (AACB), headquartered in Dakar, for coordination of monetary and financial policies.
AACB assists in the formulation of guidelines and fosters agreements among African countries to ensure price and financial stability on the continent. It also helps African countries in their relations with other international economic and financial institutions and in the project to develop a common currency and Central Bank.2
Other institutions of note in this sector include the African Centre for Monetary Studies (ACMS), also headquartered
2 AACB Website, www.aacb.org
34 ECA and Africa: Fifty Years of Partnership
in Dakar, for monetary and financial studies and research;
the West African Clearing House (WACH), headquartered in Freetown and the Central African Clearing House (CACH), Kinshasa, for trade banking services; and the Association of African Tax Administration (AATA), based in Addis Ababa, for coordination of tax policies and legislation.
The establishment by ECA of the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP) in those early years of Africa’s post-colonial formation helped to fill the critical capacity gap in the area of training and research in economic planning, management and implementation, which has fed not just the Commission’s
work but also directly benefited its member States. IDEP was established in 1962 and became operational in 1963.
ECA also worked with OAU to develop a number of important programmes in transport and communications, with the institutions so established becoming OAU technical agencies. One was the African Civil Aviation Commission (AFCAC) established in 1969 with headquarters in Dakar, for consultation, coordination and formulation of air transport policies in Africa. ECA worked not only with AFCAC but also with the African Airlines Association (AFRAA) and OAU to negotiate and implement the Yamoussoukro Declaration on a New African Air Transport Policy in the late 1980s and the 1990s. Another was the Union of African Railways (UAR) established at ECA initiative in 1973 to develop railways and rail transport in Africa mainly through interconnection, management and harmonization of the continent’s railway systems and networks, for which ECA provided much-needed assistance3.
Certain initiatives such as the Pan African Postal Union (PAPU), Pan African News Agency (PANA) and Pan African Telecommunications Union (PATU) fall into this category, with the Regional African Satellite Communication Organization (RASCOM) projects and
3 ECA at 35. ECA
Table 3.1: Number of IDEP Trainees during the Period 1963-2007
African Subregions and Others Total number of trainees
East Africa 525
Southern Africa 277
West Africa 1242
Central Africa 252
North Africa 214
Others (Austria and USA) 3
Total 2513
Source: IDEP/ECA
Mandate: To train policymakers and development professionals in economic policy management; provide advisory services to African governments and organizations; promote original thinking and research on African policy; and to become a centre of excellence that debates African development and promotes the continent’s economic independence.
Achievements: Graduated over 2500 senior officials, from all over Africa, who successfully completed either the MA degree or a short-term training programme.
Evolution: Began a 9-month MA programme in Economic Development and Planning in 1963, later restructured to include African economic policy research and policy debate. Next, introduced 3-month specialization courses, and subsequently extended the MA to 18 months. Began a new MA in Economic Policy and Management in 1996/1997.
Strategically moved from specialization to short-term and tailor-made courses in 2000. For 45 years, IDEP has helped to shape the economic thinking of many African policymakers.
Former Trainees: Graduates now hold positions as senior policymakers, economic policy analysts, strategic planning experts, industrial development specialists and agricultural policy analysts in national, subregional, regional and international institutions/organizations.
Long Tradition: The Institute has long undertaken policy research and publication of reference journals, working papers and monographs on Africa’s development challenges, including on NEPAD and Future Policy Making. This also gives credibility to its advisory services and policy forums.
Resource Centre: IDEP offers an excellent working environment for researchers, and regularly hosts interns, scholars and experts from other academic institutions in the world through its Visiting Scholar Programme. Research outputs range from course papers to theses and graduate research papers. IDEP undertakes large joint research projects with African and non-African researchers. It works, networks and cooperates with leading econometric, finance and economic institutions and associations, including ECA Divisions and SROs and United Nations Specialized Agencies.
Pan-African Library and Documentation Centre: The Library and Documentation Centre is fully computerized, with over 500,000 documents, books, journals and other publications on African countries. It is an international repository, increasingly serving as a continental information and research centre.
Funding: This comes mainly through the United Nations, the assessed contributions of its member States, the host country’s support, internally generated revenue, and the support of donors.
Bilingual: The Institute teaches in English and French, with a permanent staff. The simultaneous interpretation and translation facilities with which lectures, seminars and all other activities and services are conducted and delivered, give it an edge over similar institutions.
Source: IDEP/ECA, 2008
Box 3.1: Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP)
36 ECA and Africa: Fifty Years of Partnership
The African Regional Centre for Engineering Design and Manufacturing (ARCEDEM), established in 1979 in Ibadan, Nigeria, has a similar orientation as ARCT, with focus on design of equipment, machine components and prototypes, engineering consultancy services, training, research and dissemination of engineering design and manufacturing information. ARCEDEM, like ARCT, currently designs machines for processing agricultural produce that are of much value to its local community, apart from being replicated in other communities in Africa. Furthermore, the Centre is well equipped for training, research and publishing in the area of engineering design.
Similarly, the African Institute for Higher Technical Training and Research (AIHTTR) was established in 1979 with headquarters in Nairobi. AIHTTR has the objective of assisting member States to acquire and develop technical personnel for self-reliance, through agricultural engineering, food technology, technical teacher training, electro-mechanical engineering, electronics and energy resources, and industrial and basic science training. ECA also helped to create the African Regional Centre for Solar Energy Research (ARCSE), in Bujumbura, Burundi. What all these centres had in common was science and technology for sustainable and economic development.
others implemented under the first and second United Nations Transport and Communication Decade in Africa (UNTACDA I and II). As for the Eastern and Southern Mineral Resources Development Centre (ESAMRDC), and that for Central Africa (CAMRDC), the purpose of their establishment was research, to gather information and knowledge on the quantity and value of mineral wealth in Africa, to guide exploitation of these resources and maximize their contribution to the economies of the countries and regions concerned. ESAMRDC is now known as the Southern and Eastern African Mineral Centre (SEAMIC).
Establishment of technology development centres derived from the view that science and technological capacity-building would promote industrial and sustainable development in Africa and boost economic development. The African Regional Centre for Technology (ARCT) established in 1977 with headquarters in Dakar has, in addition to training in human resources development, promoted the development, adaptation, transfer and application of local and foreign technology in Africa. Its research and consultancy areas include food production, processing, preservation, storage and marketing. It has produced many technology handbooks and books.
Numerous and varied as these institutions and their functions were, they have a common raison d’être linked to capacity building. This is most easily seen by taking a comprehensive look at their capacity needs and interrelationships. Earlier, we saw how the banking, finance and the socio-economic development institutions and sectors aimed to support the independence and self-reliance of the emerging African States. The priority sectors at the time, agricultural and industrial development, were themselves dependent on transport, earth resources and technology, which justified the establishment of institutions that targeted those fields.
Information technology and statistics were crosscutting priorities in this regard.
The impact and role of the cartography, aerial survey, meteorological applications and remote sensing institu-tions were also of great importance. Four instituinstitu-tions were established: the African Organization for Cartog-raphy and Remote Sensing in Algiers (1989); the Re-gional Centre for Training in Aerospace Surveys (REC-TAS), the Regional Centre for Services in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing (RCSSMRS), and the Regional Remote Sensing Centre (CRTO).
The Climate for Development in Africa Programme (ClimDev-Africa) highlighted the importance of
“effective integration of climate information and services into development planning”… and “ensuring
Established in 1975 as the Regional Centre for Services in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing (RCSSMRS), RCMRD is a Centre of Excellence that provides Africa and beyond with quality geo-information, and allied ICT products, services and applications in environmental and resource management for development.
In this regard, the Centre develops and updates land resource and urban development data for the region; provides a regional early warning system for food security, environmental monitoring and disaster management through satellite technology; undertakes with national institutions spatial information projects for development planning at all levels;
coordinates the fragmented regional data using geodetic GPS techniques and data processing methodologies; develops member States’ capacity in surveying and mapping, equipment maintenance for which it also provides advisory services; and undertakes, jointly with national and international institutions, research and training in geo-information application in land resource and urban mapping for sustainable development.
As for the Centre’s achievements to date, it has successfully built member States’ capacity to establish mapping agencies; prepared various map products for member States and clients;
trained over 4000 African professionals and technicians in Remote Sensing, GIS, Surveying, and Mapping; upgraded all its information technology facilities, including internet connectivity; established strategic partnerships with such world leading geo-information institutions as NASA, USGS, ESA, ESRI, Digital Globe, GeoEye, SPOT Image, Leica Geosystems, ITC and Clark University; introduced Certificate and Diploma courses in Information Technology jointly with the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology; coordinated the unified African Reference Framework (AFREF), and leads the distribution of satellite imagery in Africa.
The Centre has published the AFRICA: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, which depicts environmental change in Africa via satellite and has established the SERVIR-Africa facility which provides SERVIR-African countries with real-time data in eight areas, namely, disasters, ecosystems, weather, climate, water, agriculture, human health, and energy, with the help of NASA and USAID.
It also manages the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters through which it prioritizes commercial near real-time satellite images of areas affected by a disaster for its member States, thereby providing value-added information for better management, assessment and monitoring of the disaster.
For urban development, RCMRD has prepared baseline maps for such African countries as the Sudan. In cooperation with FAO, it implemented the AFRICOVER East Africa project to standardize natural resource information in ten East African countries to facilitate early warning, food security, agriculture, disaster prevention and management, forest and rangeland monitoring, as well as environmental planning, watershed catchments management, biodiversity studies, and climate change modelling, among others. Similarly, it has developed predictive models for leadtime information on flooding and rift valley fever in partnership with NASA, USGS and IRI.
Source: RCMRD, 2008
Box 3.2: Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) – Nairobi, Kenya.
the mainstreaming of climate considerations in policies and programmes aimed at achieving the MDGs”4. The daily impact of these institutions on the ground is seen in weather forecasts, farmers’ activities and food production as well as in drought and desertification monitoring, and pest control. Their activities are usually unheralded and uncelebrated, but they work in cooperation with local counterpart institutions and fulfil their vital role.
Common to these institutions is the fact that in striving to become centres of excellence, they have generated and disseminated information and knowledge through research and academic exchanges. Some have additional roles as service or regulatory bodies, for example, the United Nations African Institute for the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders (UNAFRI), the African Regional Industrial Property Organization (ARIPO) and the African Regional Organization for Standardization (ARSO).
4 United Nations Joint Press Kit for Bali Climate Change Conference, 3-14 December 2007, “Climate Change and the Broad Mandate of ECA”.
Table 3.2: The functional categories of ECA-affiliated institutions
Group Institutions
Cartography, Mapping
Remote Sensing Regional Centre for Training in Aerospace Surveys (RECTAS) Ile-Ife, Nigeria;
African Organization for Cartography and Remote Sensing (AOCRS), Algiers;
the Regional Centre for Services in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing (RCSSMRS); African Centre for Meteorological Applications and Development (ACMAD), Niamey.
Engineering and
Industrial Technology African Regional Centre for Engineering Design and Manufacturing (ARCEDEM), Ibadan, Nigeria; African Regional Centre for Technology (ARCT), Dakar; African Regional Organization for Standardization (ARSO) Nairobi; African Institute for Higher Technical Training and Research (AIHTTR), Nairobi; African Regional Industrial Property Organization (ARIPO), Harare; African Regional Centre for Solar Energy Research (ARCSE), Bujumbura.
Economic and Social
Development African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP);
African Centre for Applied Research and Training in Social Development (ACARTSOD), Tripoli; Eastern and Southern African Management Institute (ESAMI), Arusha, Tanzania; Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS), Accra; Demographic Training and Research Institute (IFORD), Yaounde, Cameroon; United Nations African Institute for the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders (UNAFRI), Kampala.
Finance and Trade Central African Clearing House (CACH); West African Clearing House (WACH); African Centre for Monetary Studies (ACMS); Association of African Central Banks (AACB), Dakar; Association of African Trade Promotion Organizations (AATPO) Tangier, Morocco; Association of African Tax Admin-istration AATA, Addis Ababa; Federation of African Chambers of Commerce (FACC), Addis Ababa.
Minerals and Transport Eastern and Southern Africa Mineral Resources Development Centre (ESAMRDC), Dar-es-Salaam; Central Africa Mineral Resources Development Centre (CAMRDC), Brazzaville; Port Management Association of North Africa (PMANA), Tunis; Port Management Association of West and Central Africa (PMAWCA), Lagos, Nigeria; Port Management Association of Eastern and Southern Africa (PMAESA), Mombasa, Kenya.
Source: ECA, 2008
39 Building Regional Institutions for Capacity Development