MDB Results 2026: An Independent Assessment — Day 2, Part 4 of 5
Part 4: The Homework the IMF Does Rate — And Why the Score Has Not Moved
Kofi went back inside.
The genie was in the corridor. Kofi sat down.
“You said the IMF rates its technical assistance. The homework. You said there were problems with it. Tell me.”
“The IMF runs five regional technical assistance centres across Sub-Saharan Africa. The Africa Regional Technical Assistance Centres — the AFRITACs. East. West 1. West 2. Central. South. Five centres. Operating since 2002. Hundreds of advisors. Thousands of missions. Budget tripled in real terms since the pilot phase. Mission execution rates consistently above 80 percent. By every operational metric, the machine is running.”
“And?”
“And the region’s average public financial management score — the number that measures whether governments can actually budget, account for, and control public money — has remained at approximately 2.2 out of 4.0 for twenty years. The adequate performance threshold is 2.8. The score has barely moved.”
“Twenty years,” said Kofi. “And the score has not moved.”
“But now ask me what the IMF’s own rating says about the quality of the work it delivered.”
Kofi looked at him.
“What does the IMF’s own rating say?”
“Excellent. Highly Successful. The independent evaluation of AFRITAC East concluded that overall results were very strong. Excellent quality. High relevance. Strongly owned by member countries.”
“So the IMF rates its homework as excellent,” said Kofi. “And the PEFA score has not moved in twenty years.”
“Both things are true simultaneously. And the reason is this: the evaluation system rates quality of delivery, relevance of topics, satisfaction of participants. It does not rate impact. Impact was described in the TAEP documentation as ‘methodologically challenging.’ The exam has never been sat. In twenty years.”
“There is a name for what is happening,” said the genie. “A biologist called it isomorphic mimicry. Countries adopt the external form of modern governance — they pass the IPSAS accrual accounting roadmap, they publish the climate budget tags, they launch the gender-disaggregated expenditure framework — without acquiring the underlying functional capacity that would make any of it work. The documentation looks correct. The treasury is still broken.”
“Form without function,” said Kofi.
“A man called Allen Schick identified the correct sequence twenty-five years ago. Governments must master the basics before they attempt the advanced reforms. You cannot manage cash you have not budgeted. You cannot manage cash you have not first recorded. Seven foundational steps, in order. Cash budgeting. Basic accounting. Cash management predictability. Payroll controls — no ghost workers. Procurement integrity. Financial data integrity — bank reconciliations daily. External audit independence. When those seven are secure — then, and only then — the advanced subjects.”
“And the AFRITAC advisors do not work in that order?”
“The advisors are sent to run workshops on the subjects that satisfy donor reporting requirements. The European donors who fund the AFRITACs want to see Green PFM, digital transformation, climate budget tagging, accrual accounting roadmaps. These subjects appear in parliamentary reports in Brussels and Bern. Basic cash reconciliation does not appear in any parliamentary report. So the advanced subjects get taught. The foundations remain broken. The score stays at 2.2.”
“Do not teach a government to do Green PFM,” said Kofi slowly, “when ghost workers are still on the payroll.”
“Do not introduce accrual accounting when the basic cash book is not reconciled. And the independent evaluators — Cowater International, Ecorys — commissioned by the IMF itself, have documented exactly this. Cowater found that 75 percent of PFM reforms in fragile states are highly dependent on the continued presence of the external advisor. When the advisor boards the plane home, the reform stops. Ecorys found a structural product-driven bias: success is measured by whether the law was passed, the roadmap adopted, the portal deployed. Not by whether the treasury works. Not by whether the money arrived at the school.”
“Tell me about the PEFA scores in more detail,” said Kofi. He had been listening carefully. “Which subjects are improving and which are not?”
“That is the most revealing question. And the answer is precisely what Schick would predict. Look at what has improved: budget documentation. Publishing budget circulars. Producing annual financial reports. Establishing legal frameworks. The Form indicators. They have scores of 3.2, 3.5. Countries can produce documents. Now look at what has not improved.”
| PEFA Indicator | SSA Average Score | Category | What It Means In Practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| PI-6: Budget Documentation | 3.2 / 4.0 | Form | Easy to publish. Requires no functional capacity. |
| PI-1: Cash Budget Reliability | 2.4 / 4.0 | Basics | Approved budget rarely matches what is executed. |
| PI-21: Cash Management | 2.2 / 4.0 | CRITICAL FUNCTION | Cash rationed at year-end. Schools starved. Districts operate on informal credit. |
| PI-23: Payroll Controls | 2.3 / 4.0 | CRITICAL FUNCTION | Ghost workers persist. Physical audits rarely conducted. |
| PI-24: Procurement | 2.1 / 4.0 | CRITICAL FUNCTION | Primary channel for fiscal leakage. Scores backsliding post-COVID. |
| PI-27: Financial Data Integrity | 2.0 / 4.0 | CRITICAL FUNCTION | Bank reconciliations months behind. Accounts are historical fiction. |
| PI-29: Basic Accounting | 2.1 / 4.0 | CRITICAL FUNCTION | Timely cash-basis statements not produced in most fragile states. |
| PI-30: External Audit | 1.9 / 4.0 | CRITICAL FUNCTION | SAIs underfunded. Reports ignored by parliament. The lowest score in the whole framework. |
“The Form indicators improve. The Function indicators do not. Budget documentation: 3.2 out of 4.0. Cash management predictability: 2.2. External audit: 1.9. And the AFRITAC missions, driven by donor agendas, systematically target the Form indicators — the ones that produce visible deliverables for parliamentary reports in Europe — while the Function indicators, the ones that determine whether the money reaches the school, remain broken.”
“They are decorating the building,” said Kofi.
“They are decorating a building whose foundations are cracked. And for every 3.2 missions completed — workshops held, manuals drafted, laws reviewed — only one verified institutional change can be confirmed in a subsequent review. The machine executes at 82 percent. The outcomes are produced at 31 percent. That is the activity-impact paradox.”
“Tell me about the per-diem economy,” said Kofi.
“The workshops are held in Mauritius. In Nairobi. In Accra. In Dakar. The daily subsistence allowance for a five-day regional workshop can equal 25 to 50 percent of a Finance Ministry official’s monthly salary. In some fragile states it is more. The African Development Bank has documented that when workshop allowances significantly increase monthly pay, civil servants become preoccupied with pursuing those allowances and disengage from the content. They come for the per diem, not for the learning.”
“And who attends?”
“In smaller member states, the same cohort of five to ten senior officials attends most AFRITAC events. They are not sent because they are the people who will implement the reform. They are sent because they are senior enough to attend international workshops. While they are in Mauritius, the operational desks at the Finance Ministry are unstaffed. The mission designed to build capacity temporarily disables it. In Malawi, evaluators documented that implementation stopped the moment per diems were removed. The reform was rented, not institutionalised.”
“Where are the reports?” Kofi asked. His voice was quiet but direct.
“What reports?”
“The thousands of mission reports. Twenty years. Five centres. Hundreds of missions per year. Every advisor produces a report. Where are they? Can I download them? Can a Finance Minister in Lagos search what the AFRITAC advisor told his treasury five years ago? Can a researcher compare what was recommended to Tanzania in 2015 with what was recommended to Uganda in 2018? Can anyone check whether the same advice is being recycled to different countries because the donor funding continues regardless of whether it worked?”
The genie was very still.
“Publication of IMF technical assistance reports is voluntary. It requires the consent of the recipient country. In practice, the vast majority of the thousands of mission reports produced over twenty years have never been published. Marked for restricted circulation. The government receives them. The IMF files them. The donors who funded the mission see them. The public does not.”
“So nobody can verify the recycling,” said Kofi.
“Nobody can easily verify whether the same reform recommendations are being made to different countries year after year. Whether the IPSAS roadmap for Ghana in 2016 is structurally identical to the IPSAS roadmap for Tanzania in 2019. Whether the cash management advisory in Liberia in 2018 repeats the cash management advisory in Sierra Leone in 2015. The reports are not public. The comparison cannot be made. The donor funding continues. The workshops are held. The reports are filed. The score stays at 2.2.”
“There is one more thing,” said the genie. “The Nigeria paradox.”
“Nigeria,” said Kofi. He kept coming back to Nigeria today.
“Nigeria has approximately 141 million people in extreme poverty. That is more than the combined total of the entire AFRITAC East coverage area — seven countries, 185 million people total. AFRITAC East deploys approximately 180 to 210 missions per year. Nigeria receives approximately 8 to 10 missions per year at the federal level. When you calculate missions per million poor, AFRITAC East averages 2.5 missions per million poor. Nigeria: 0.06. Liberia — 2.7 million people — receives roughly the same number of missions as Nigeria. 45 times more attention per poor person.”
“Why?”
“Because small fragile states are easier to work in. They are blank slates. You can pilot an IPSAS roadmap in Sierra Leone without the political complexity of engaging with a federal government of 220 million people across 36 states. And the results can be reported to donors without the embarrassment of scale. The machine prefers the easy rooms.”
Kofi was quiet for a long moment.
“The homework gets top marks,” he said finally. “The score has not moved. The reports cannot be downloaded. The advanced subjects are taught before the basics are secured. The money goes to workshops in Mauritius. And the largest concentration of extreme poverty on the continent gets 0.06 missions per million poor.”
“And the lending programmes — the 280 billion dollars — are not rated at all. The homework is marked. The exam is not. That is the system.”
Part 1: The Ship That Does Not Keep Score
Part 2: Nigeria and the Africa-Wide Emergency
Part 3: The Cold War Across 19th Street
Part 4: The Homework the IMF Does Rate (this piece)
Part 5: Europe’s Chair
Full series and underlying research at mdbreform.com