The Collaborative Africa Budget Reform Initiative (CABRI) is a pan-African network of senior budget officials in ministries of finance and/or planning, created as a platform for its members to share experiences on budget reform programmes and to contribute towards the efficacy of public finance management in Africa. A key factor for the network's ability to achieve its objectives is the availability of comparative information on how budget systems work across the African continent. CABRI therefore saw an opportunity in including a sample of African countries in an extension of the already established Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Survey on Budget Practices and Procedures planned for 2008. The complete set of the 2008 survey results for 97 countries is now available in a comprehensive database, which includes 26 African countries,1 the data for which were collected in collaboration with CABRI. The results allow CABRI as well as other interested parties to make substantial analyses and to inform research on current practices in budgeting. This report, compiled with support from the African Development Bank (AfDB), brings together selected findings from the survey to give an overall picture of the state of budgeting in Africa.

The survey seeks to gather information on how central government budget systems function across the various phases of the budget process, from formulation to approval, execution and audit. Areas such as accounting and performance information are also covered, and there is a new section on aid management, to address the specific challenges faced by aid-dependent developing countries. The survey was filled in through an online platform by Ministry of Finance officials in participating countries, and the data gathered on African countries went through a peer review process that involved the CABRI Secretariat, the LSE team and country experts. Each participating country was requested to respond to peer reviewer comments. In some cases the quality of the data can still be improved, and for certain sections the applicability and relevance of the OECD questionnaire to an African context can be questioned (e.g. in the areas of fiscal rules or performance budgeting). The existence of such a database, however, is an important step forward in understanding how budget systems work across a range of countries.

This report analyses the survey results for the 26 African countries that participated in the exercise, providing an overview of budget practices and procedures in these key areas: (a) budget timelines, (b) budget formulation, (c) parliamentary oversight, (d) budget execution, (e) fiscal transparency, (f) off-budget spending, and (g) aid management. These areas were selected in order to cover the most relevant issues for budgeting in Africa, and to focus on a sub-set of questions for which both coverage and quality of responses were of the highest level possible. The analysis highlights the variety of practices and procedures that characterise African countries, for example, with respect to budget timelines, to the nature of budget institutions and to the role of parliaments. These differences are the consequence of a number of factors, from administrative traditions to reform efforts, to past and current economic realities. An important consequence of this is the fact that it might be difficult to identify ready-made recipes that can contribute to improving budget practices across the continent, as improvements will depend on tailor-made interventions that are designed to address specific issues within each country's budget system.

Budget Practices and Procedures in Africa 2008 - Appendix