PFM is infrastructure too, and Africa is finally funding it

By Richard Ndebele

When people think about infrastructure, they picture roads, dams, railways and power lines — the concrete stuff you can touch and photograph.

But Africa’s development story is littered with half-finished projects, facilities that break down too quickly, and public services that never quite deliver what was budgeted for.

The familiar diagnosis is “lack of funding.” The less visible diagnosis is this: even when funding exists, weak public financial management (PFM) systems can leak, delay, misdirect or dilute it. In that sense, PFM is also infrastructure — the invisible kind that keeps visible infrastructure alive.

That is why last week’s launch of the Strengthening PAFA and Public Financial Management Resilience in Africa (SPRA) Programme by the Pan African Federation of Accountants (PAFA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) is easy to underestimate, but hard to overstate.

The AfDB is committing UA 4.0 million (about USD 5.4 million) over three years to strengthen PFM systems and professional accountancy organisations across 23 eligible African countries, especially in transition and fragile contexts. This is not a mega-project. It is a multiplier project.

The quiet shift: PFM as resilience infrastructure

AfDB’s framing is telling. SPRA is not simply a training programme for accountants; it is a resilience programme. The logic is that professional capacity and good governance directly determine whether countries can respond to shocks — debt stress, climate disasters, conflict spillovers or political transitions — without losing control of public resources. Put differently, PFM is being treated as national shock-absorption capacity.

This matters because Africa’s development headwinds are no longer occasional. They are structural: climate volatility, commodity swings, migration pressure, elevated debt servicing, and geopolitical uncertainty. You can build a bridge, but if your procurement rules are weak, your reporting is inconsistent, and your audit pipeline is thin, the bridge will cost too much, take too long, and deteriorate early. Hard infrastructure without PFM is a bucket with holes.

Why AfDB is betting on professional ecosystems

SPRA’s emphasis on strengthening PAFA and national Professional Accountancy Organisations (PAOs) is strategic. PAOs are not side actors; they are the custodians of standards, ethics, training pipelines, certification, and discipline. They shape what public-sector accountants and auditors know, how they behave, and what they are held accountable for.

If Africa wants comparable, trustworthy public accounts, it cannot rely on individual ministries alone. It needs a continental professional ecosystem that harmonises standards and raises baseline competence across countries. SPRA explicitly targets the standardisation of professional accounting standards, tools and practices across Africa, an integration move that aligns with an AfCFTA-era economy where cross-border comparability and trust in public reporting will increasingly underpin investment decisions.

This is also why PAFA is a logical continental vehicle. With representation of more than 50 PAOs, PAFA offers a scaffold for licensing, continuing professional development, peer learning, and ethical alignment. In development terms, this is a “train-the-trainers” architecture, and it is designed to compound.

Small money, big leverage

At face value, USD 5.4 million across 23 countries is modest. But SPRA is not trying to fund projects; it is trying to improve how projects are funded, monitored and audited. The return on investment is therefore not measured in kilometres of road or numbers of clinics. It is measured in reduced leakage, credible reporting, faster procurement cycles, fewer stalled commitments, and more predictable cash management.

Think of the governance multiplier like this: a one-percent improvement in the integrity of public spending in a mid-sized African economy can preserve more value than an entire discrete grant. SPRA is wagering that better-trained, better-regulated public-sector accountants and auditors will shift that curve.

The bigger momentum wave

SPRA is not a solitary bet. It sits in a wider momentum across the continent to professionalise public finance. Development partners and professional bodies have been steadily expanding public sector professionalisation initiatives, scaling training and standards work beyond pilot countries. The signal is clear: capacity is becoming a formal investment line, not an afterthought.

What this means for Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe stands to gain from SPRA’s approach whether or not it is among the direct beneficiaries. Three implications are immediate.

First, professionalisation is a service-delivery accelerator. Zimbabwe’s infrastructure and social programmes have often been constrained not only by the scale of funding, but by the fragility of project management, procurement discipline, and financial reporting. Strengthening public-sector accounting and audit competencies tightens the entire chain from budget to delivery. In plain terms: better books lead to better roads, clinics and water systems.

Second, it supports results-based public finance reforms already on the national agenda. Vision 2030 and the coming NDS2 cycle demand credible performance budgeting, value-for-money analytics, and predictable monitoring. Those instruments depend on professional public finance cadres and harmonised standards. By focusing on better quality financial reports and the professionalisation of public sector accountants and auditors, SPRA aligns directly with that pathway.

Third, it strengthens credibility for ESG and PPP financing. Zimbabwe is pushing blended finance and PPPs in infrastructure, while companies and state-owned enterprises are increasingly expected to report ESG outcomes. Both agendas require trustworthy financial statements, ethical procurement, and auditable results. Investors can discount country risk, but they cannot invest where they cannot trust the numbers.

The AI and digital twist

There is also a forward-looking dimension. As African states digitise revenue collection, payments, and procurement, new vulnerabilities emerge: cyber fraud, transaction manipulation, deepfake authorisations, and automated rent-seeking. Strong professional standards and audit skills are the guardrails that allow governments to adopt digital tools at scale without creating a faster leakage pipeline. SPRA, by professionalising accountants and auditors, helps build that guardrail layer.

A closing provocation

Africa has long understood how to fund and build physical assets. The harder lesson has been that assets do not survive on capital alone. They survive on governance that works. SPRA is a timely recognition of that truth.

If public finance is the bloodstream of development, then accountants, auditors and their professional bodies are part of the circulatory system. When that system is weak, even the biggest projects starve. When it is strong, public money reaches the citizens it was meant to serve, at the quality and speed they deserve.

So yes: PFM is infrastructure too — and Africa is finally funding it. Zimbabwe should treat that continental pivot as an invitation to deepen its own professionalisation agenda. In the end, the most transformative infrastructure is often the one you cannot see — until it starts working.

Richard Ndebele is Manager: Technical, Research & Quality Assurance at the Chartered Governance and Accountancy Institute in Zimbabwe (CGI Zimbabwe) and Country Champion for the PAFA Sustainability Centre of Excellence. He writes on governance, sustainability, and public financial management in Africa.
Contact: rndebele@cgizim.org