The Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa (MEFMI) is a regionally owned institute currently with 14 member countries: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Background

During the 1980s and 1990s, many countries in the Africa region faced entrenched problems in the capacity for debt and reserves management as well as macroeconomic management. In response, senior economic officials and financial managers in Eastern and Southern Africa launched the Eastern and Southern Africa Initiative in Debt and Reserves Management (ESAIDARM) in 1994, whose mandate was later broadened to cover macroeconomic and financial management issues and renamed the Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa (MEFMI) in 1997.

MEFMI activities put special focus on:

• Macro-economic management which deals with analysis of the economy, planning and forecasting.
• Financial Sector Management, which covers financial market development, foreign exchange reserves management, regulation and supervision of financial institutions, payment systems and monetary policy implementation.
• Sovereign Debt Management, which encompasses debt database development and management, institutional and legal aspects, analysis, policy and strategies.

Fellows Development Programme which trains promising young professionals with the view to groom them into specialists / experts available to their countries and to the region.

The MEFMI client institutions are;

• Ministries of finance
• Ministries of economic development and planning or equivalent
• Central banks
• Other public institutions that interface with these core institutions.

The MEFMI target groups in all the beneficiary institutions are:
• Junior to senior professionals
• Heads of department / division, senior officials
• Top executives

Mode of Delivery
• MEFMI delivers its products and services through the following;
• Courses / workshops for professionals
• Seminars for senior professionals
• Country missions
• Retreats for heads of relevant departments / divisions / units
• Special policy related studies
• Preparation of manuals and guidelines

MEFMI also conducts Executive Forum Series for networking amongst the following category of decision makers;

• Ministers of finance and planning and economic development and equivalent
• Secretaries to the treasury and permanent secretaries for finance and equivalent and their deputies
• Central bank governors and their deputies
• Human Resources Managers

At these events top level policy makers have the opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences among themselves facilitated by world class experts availed by MEFMI.