You are invited to the launch of the Africa Capacity Report 2015 which focuses on the important topic of Domestic Resource Mobilization.

The summary/key highlights will be presented followed by commentary from World Bank and IMF discussants.

Chair: Jim Brumby, Acting Sr. Director – Governance Global Practice

Opening Remarks: Prof. Emmanuel Nnadozie, Executive Secretary, African Capacity Building Foundation

Speakers: Dr. Thomas Munthali, Director of Knowledge, Monitoring and Evaluation, African Capacity Building Foundation

Hon. Goodall Gondwe, Minister of Finance, Malawi

Discussants: Blanca Moreno-Dodson, Lead Economist, Macroeconomics and Fiscal Management Global Practice

Mario Mansour, Deputy Division Chief, Fiscal Affairs Division, IMF

Mobilizing domestic resources in Africa is crucial for achieving continental and international development agenda.

Recognized as an effective strategy to finance Africa’s development, Domestic Resource Mobilization (DRM) – the generation of savings and taxes from domestic resources and allocating them to economically and socially productive activities – matters for Africa:

• To mobilize significant internal resources to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Agenda 2063;
• To ensure resource predictability and responsiveness to domestic priorities;
• To retain significant resources for development priorities by curbing illicit financial outflows.

Effectively mobilizing domestic resources in African countries faces significant challenges

ACR 2015 country case studies highlight a number of important constraints:

• Very narrow tax base which is further eroded by high levels of capital flight, tax evasion and avoidance, and the proliferation of tax exemptions.
• Mineral-dependent countries exert little effort to collect tax revenue.
• Tax authorities lack legitimacy and paying taxes is not seen as worthwhile due to poor outcomes from public expenditure.
• Low penetration of the formal banking sector.
• Large agricultural sectors sell raw commodities and high levels of informality in the service sector.
• Poor business climate that hinders levels of taxable profits.
• Lack of human, technical, legal and regulatory, and financial capacities in DRM generally, and especially for curbing illicit flows.

Goodall Gondwe
Minister of Finance, Economic Planning & Development

Hon. Goodall Gondwe’s is a Malawian economist who since 2014 has served in the cabinet of Malawi as Minister of Finance. Previously he was Minister of Finance from 2004 to 2009, Minister of Local Government from 2009 to 2010 and Minister of Natural Resources, Energy and Environment Affairs from 2011 to 2012.Hon. Gondwe has had a long and distinguished career as an economist. Among other positions, he has worked at the Reserve Bank of Malawi (Central Bank of Malawi) where he rose to the position of General Manager of the Bank; he later joined the Civil Service in Malawi where he served as Secretary to the Treasury.

In 1973 he joined the African Development Bank as Vice President (and later Acting President) of the Bank. In 1980, he joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) where he worked in the African Department and rose to the position of Director for the Department. He served in the IMF for 22 years. In 2002, he was appointed as Chief Economic Advisor to the Malawi President, a position he held until 2004. Hon. Gondwe was appointed to the position of Minister of Finance in June 2004 by President Bingu wa Mutharika. He has been credited for Malawi's success during Mutharika's first term. His economic development policies, together with Mutharika, helped drastically improve the economic situation in the country. Under his stewardship, the rate of inflation fell from 30% in 2005 to 6% by 2008. More importantly Malawi saw its economy grow by over 7 percent on average.

In 2008, Gondwe was voted as Africa’s Finance Minister of the Year at the African Banker Awards, held at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington DC, USA.                                       

Professor Emmanuel Nnadozie
Executive Secretary, African Capacity Building Foundation

Prof. Emmanuel Nnadozie, an economist and development expert, became the Executive Secretary of the African Capacity Building Foundation on Dec. 1, 2013.

He came from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Addis Ababa where he worked from 2004 to 2012. His last post at the Commission was Director of Macroeconomic Policy Division and Chief Economist.

In addition, he was an Adviser to the Executive Secretary of the Commission. Among his major achievements in that role was his successful supervision of the production for four unbroken years of the flagship publication of the Commission, the annual Economic Report on Africa, between 2010 and 2013.Previously, he was UNECA’s Director of Economic Development and NEPAD Division where he helped to coordinate the assistance of UN agencies to the African Union and its affiliates, including the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). He joined the UN after a distinguished academic career. He was Professor of Economics at the Truman State University, formerly Northeast Missouri State University, Kirksville, Missouri, in the U.S. from 2002 to 2004. Before then, he was Associate Professor from 1994 to 2002, and Assistant Professor from 1989 to 1994.

He served for 12 years as the Director of pre-Doctoral programme at the university until he left in 2004. In addition, he was Visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte from 1996 to 1997.

Thomas Chataghalala Munthali, PhD
Director of Knowledge, Monitoring and Evaluation (KME) at the Africa Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF).

Dr. Munthali He holds a Masters and PhD in Economics from University of Leeds, England.

Prior to joining ACBF, Dr. Munthali was the Malawi Country Director for Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA).  As a seasoned Economist with extensive international experience, he has worked with Malawi’s Ministry of Economic Planning where he was part of the team that coordinated the development of the Malawi Economic Growth Strategy; the World Bank where he coordinated research around exchange rates and transport systems as part of the 2009 country economic memorandum; and UNFPA where he provided leadership in strategies for harnessing population and its dividend for development. He has written a number of journal and workshop/conference papers on corporate governance.

He is the past President of the Economics Association of Malawi (and remains its Executive member). He was also a member of the Advisory Council for Strategic Planning that advised the then African Union Chairman, Prof. Bingu Wa Mutharika.

Blanca Moreno-Dodson
Lead Economist, GMFDR, World Bank

Mrs. Blanca Moreno-Dodson is a development economist with more than twenty years of World Bank experience, especially in Africa and Latin America. Her main areas of work are macroeconomics and fiscal policy for developing countries, with a focus on growth, inequality and poverty reduction. She has worked on public expenditure analysis, fiscal sustainability, tax policy reforms, public finance, and transfer pricing. She is the editor of three World Bank books:

“Reducing Poverty on a Global Scale”, 2005, “Public Finance for Poverty Reduction”, 2007, and “Is Fiscal Policy the Answer? A Developing Country Perspective”, 2012 and has also published on macroeconomics, public finance, growth, and poverty issues at the National Tax Association Journal, Banca d’Italia  Fiscal Policy Annual Volume, Hacienda Pública Española Journal, and Bulletin of Economic Research, as well as the World Bank Working Papers series. 

Prior to joining the Bank, she worked as a junior economist at the European Union (European Commission and European Parliament).