Induction to Fragile Environment Financial Management(Self-Paced)

The course outlines some key Financial Management issues raised by fragile and conflict-affected states which are among the most important faced by the international community as a whole. Fragile states pose different challenges for addressing the problem of corruption, weak financial management systems, governance, absence of government and presence of conflict than normal development contexts. Development partners including the bank struggle to find effective strategies for addressing these weaknesses in such situations. A reluctance to deal with the issues of corruption that inhibit the increased usage of country systems has been standard practice as political leaders in fragile states are seen to block reform when faced with an aggressive PFM reform agenda. The tendency with development partners including the Bank has been to focus on delivery of services rather than build systems and institutions. Owing to weaknesses noted, the need to respond effectively given the key challenges faced in FM is critical for achieving results. Because the Bank has used normal induction not tailored to FCS countries, it sometimes takes new staff a while to get to understand the conditions within which they operate to be effective and valuable team members on project teams that work in such countries. It is therefore important that within the confines of the laid out Financial Management principles in the existing Financial Management Policy and associated Manual, staff that work in FCS have a greater understanding of how best to support task teams and clients in putting in place arrangements that work best in such FCS situations. This can be done by making use of flexibilities, tools and techniques most appropriate to each FCS situation. To address this aim the need to induct such staff from the outset has become key. The training materials to be developed should enable such staff to be ready to hit the ground running whilst being fully aware of the environment, challenges and risks to be encountered. The course covers core areas such as FM policy framework, FM architecture in fragile environments, FM guidelines and their applicability in such environments, FM support in an entire project cycle, working with the UN and related FM issues, Financing recurrent costs as well as building capacity in Situations of extreme lack of capacity. The course also covers an introduction to doing PFM reforms in fragile environments, how to deal with Fraud and Corruption, annotates peculiar FM risks in such environments, how to conduct OP7.30 pertaining to FM aspects ;introduces FM flexibilities in such situations, working in insecure environments as well as dealing with core aspects of disbursements.