Abidjan: The International Monetary Fund (IMF), with financial backing from the Governments of Japan and Germany, and in collaboration with regional technical assistance centers (AFRITACs Central and West), organized a series of seminars known as the Interregional Seminar on Public Investment Management (SEIGIP) in 2022, 2023, and 2025. These seminars were aimed at enhancing public investment management in Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa.
According to Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the SEIGIP seminars gathered approximately 60 senior officials from 21 sub-Saharan African countries, predominantly Francophone, offering a platform to evaluate the impact of IMF’s capacity development initiatives and the potential of South-South cooperation. The initial seminar focused on addressing Public Investment Management (PIM) challenges amid the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the importance of robust legal and institutional frameworks and discussing strategies for identifying and supporting climate change-sensitive public investments.
The second seminar, held in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, from May 30 to June 1, 2023, maintained the focus on PIM reforms, delving into project appraisal and selection, budgeting and execution, asset management, and fiscal risk management. It highlighted best practices in project selection and the significance of multiyear budgetary authorizations alongside annual payment appropriations.
The third edition, conducted in Libreville, Gabon, from April 28-30, 2025, further explored the upstream phases of the PIM cycle. It underscored the necessity of ex-ante evaluations for improving project selection, shared best practices in project selection criteria, and discussed the digitalization of PIM processes.
The series of SEIGIP seminars demonstrated the value of sustained technical exchanges between technical assistance providers and national experts, resulting in increased technical proficiency among participants. Many attendees returned for multiple editions, reflecting a growing understanding of the discussed topics due to the technical assistance provided by the IMF and its regional centers between sessions.
Participants emphasized the importance of sharing country experiences, which provoked significant debate and interaction, and praised the practical group exercises that fostered a dynamic and collaborative environment. Feedback from SEIGIP3 indicated overwhelming satisfaction, with 97.7% of participants confident in applying the acquired knowledge and skills, and 95.6% expressing overall satisfaction with the seminar content.
Looking forward, the experience gleaned from the past three years points to potential improvements such as extending seminar duration to four and a half days to allow for more practical exercises and in-depth training on specific themes. The upcoming SEIGIP 4 is scheduled to take place from January 26 to 30, 2026, in Nouakchott, Mauritania, promising to continue the momentum and further consolidate the gains achieved in strengthening public investment management in the region.