The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) and the United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA) will hold a virtual Academic Conference running under the theme, “Africa’s fiscal space, fragility and conflict” on Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 February 2022.
The Conference will provide a global platform for African experts, scholars and academics to discuss and raise international awareness of certain critical issues, including the need to strengthen capacities of African countries to formulate and implement policies that reinforce the interlinkages between development, peace, security, humanitarian and human rights.
Since there is a lack of information on how the Covid-19 pandemic may contribute to fragility and conflict through reduced fiscal space, the Conference will fill this gap by generating concrete policy recommendations from selected papers and discussions on how to expand fiscal space, advance sustainable development, avert the deterioration of fragility, and prevent conflicts on the continent in the context of recovery and building back better from the pandemic.
The conference expects to instigate relevant policy changes and improvements among African states with inspired key messages and policy recommendations emanating from the presentation of studies, the interventions of discussants, and the deliberations during the interactive discussions.
The Conference will have four sub-themes for discussion: (a) Debt sustainability and impact on conflict and state fragility; (b) Illicit financial flows, decentralization and their impacts on the fiscal space in Africa; (c) Building/strengthening Africa’s resilience to shocks; and (d) Advancing inclusive, equitable and peaceful society in Africa.
The conference has become necessary as rising unemployment, loss of income, and the associated social consequences coupled with governments’ inability to sustain spending on essential services in the face of the shrinking fiscal space, pose significant challenges to the UN’s prevention agenda.
Participants at the Conference will include African member states of both the UN and ACBF, the UN system entities, members of the UN Regional Monthly Review (RMR) meeting, African academics and think tanks including members of the ACBF and OSAA Africa Knowledge Network.
