CABRI’s 2025 Africa Budget Practices and Procedures (BPP) Survey, conducted across 18 countries, provided important insights into the evolving landscape of Public Financial Management (PFM) Systems on the continent. The findings show that African countries have made significant progress in strengthening the institutional foundations over the past decade. Across many countries, the core architecture of modern fiscal management systems is now firmly in place. However, the central challenge remains in translating these frameworks into consistent, functional, and accountable budget outcomes.
The 2025 BPP Survey Report was officially launched in March. The participating countries represent approximately 37 percent of Africa’s population and 37.7 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), making the results both significant and broadly representative. The launch aimed to provide evidence-based insights into the key challenges facing PFM systems across Africa, while highlighting areas of progress and persistent gaps. It also sought to inform the design and implementation of effective budget reforms, strengthen institutional capacity, enhance overall budget effectiveness, and contribute to the development of good practice guidelines reflecting successful reform experiences observed across different African contexts.
The exchange brought together diverse stakeholders, including senior government officials from ministries of Budget, Finance, and the Debt departments across 22 countries, representatives from international development organisations, think tanks, civil society organisations, non-governmental organisations, PFM researchers, private sector actors, and the media. The diversity ensured that the discussions reflected both policy and practice perspectives across the PFM ecosystem.
The findings show that progress in PFM systems is both achievable and measurable. Countries that recorded the highest levels of improvement compared with the 2015 survey show that sustained and deliberate reform efforts can yield substantial results. Overall, the survey confirms that African countries have made significant strides in building the institutional frameworks, with most countries now having key PFM structures in place.
Despite these gains, important challenges remain. While institutional foundations are now largely universal, enforcement mechanisms continue to lag. Operational PFM functions have seen notable improvements in digitalisation, with over 80 percent of countries reporting a functioning PFM System, either fully or partially, and 72 percent achieving some level of system interoperability. This suggests that digital infrastructure is broadly maturing across the continent. However, this progress in digitalisation has not yet translated into commensurate improvements in transparency, as access to open public fiscal data remains limited, with only about half of the participating countries providing such access.
Over the past decade, reforms have largely focused on strengthening institutional architecture, driven by the adoption of international accounting standards, accrual accounting practices, and medium-term budgeting frameworks. As a result, form indicators representing institutional rules and structures have improved significantly, while functional indicators, which reflect actual enforcement and behavioural practices, have declined. Most reversals are observed in supplementary budget frequency and discipline, executive veto power, and follow-up on Supreme Audit Institution (SAI) findings. While countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Burkina Faso witnessed overall improvements over the decade, these same areas of weakness persist. Nonetheless, these countries have recorded progress across 18 harmonised indicators reflecting improvements in budget formulation, execution, and oversight.
In her discussant reflections during the launch, Sally Torbert, Global Lead for Policy and Research at the International Budget Partnership, noted that:
“While PFM systems may be well established on paper, their influence on decision-making during budget execution remains uneven, raising a critical question about how to move from findings to actual reforms and ensure that these systems function meaningfully in practice. The main constraint is not necessarily within institutions themselves, but in how they interact, with key challenges lying in coordination, incentives, and authority rather than in technical design. Evidence alone is rarely sufficient to drive reform; what matters is how it is used, who engages with it, and how it feeds into broader decision-making processes, including the political economy dynamics that shape outcomes. Advancing reforms therefore requires building shared problem recognition among countries, creating spaces for engagement across ministries of finance, legislatures, oversight institutions, and civil society organisations, reframing reforms beyond technical issues to focus on development outcomes, and strengthening the role of civil society in translating technical findings into accessible insights, linking budgets to citizens’ priorities, and reinforcing the broader accountability ecosystem”.
CABRI’s BPP survey is a critical tool for understanding the evolving PFM landscape across Africa. This survey is an opportunity for countries to learn from one another, benchmark their practices, and assess whether reforms are translating into improved budget outcomes. As CABRI continues to utilise this evidence within the broader PFM ecosystem, the focus will be on ensuring that reforms are implemented in practice and adapted to country-specific contexts, rather than remaining at the level of formal compliance.
The survey is also highly relevant for civil society organisations as it provides evidence that can strengthen their engagements with governments and improve their ability to assess the implementation and impact of PFM reforms.
More broadly, the survey supports CABRI’s mission to advance credible, inclusive, and transparent PFM reforms. It enables countries to identify gaps, track progress over time, and implement reforms that strengthen institutional capacity and accountability. By generating reliable data and fostering peer- learning, the BPP survey serves as both a snapshot of the current PFM landscape and a guide for sustained improvements across African public finance systems.
The key lesson from the survey is that while significant progress has been made in building institutional frameworks, the next phase of reform must focus on translating these frameworks into effective and accountable budget outcomes. Addressing the gap between form and function remains a central strategic priority for CABRI as it continues to support member countries in advancing sustainable and impactful PFM reforms.