The city of Tangier is hosting, from 1 to 3 December, a CAFRAD Pan-African Forum on the theme "Innovations and major transformations introduced with a view to better management of State accounts". This event is aimed at those responsible for institutions in charge of auditing, controlling, inspecting and evaluating State services and institutions. It mainly concerns those who follow the presidents of the courts of auditors and their immediate collaborators, presidents of Economic and Social Councils and their collaborators, inspectors and controllers general of finance and other State institutions, and national and international institutions working in this field. Over three days, meetings followed by debates will be organised on the same theme and will be led by experts with extensive experience in the field of auditing, control, inspection and evaluation.

Their role will be to introduce the subjects to be examined, to lead the debates and to participate in all the discussions. They will also assist in the formulation of the forum's recommendations and conclusions. This is part of the leadership capacity-building programme. It is therefore expected that the forum will further strengthen the capacities of those responsible for institutions in charge of auditing, controlling, inspecting and evaluating State services and institutions. The ambition of this meeting is also to allow participants to evaluate the work accomplished since the creation of these institutions, in order to improve their working methods and enable them to achieve better results in terms of changing the customs and practices of management and control of public assets. These institutions will also find more effective methods for conducting their missions thanks to the simplification of practices, but also thanks to the reduction of duplication, which increases the State's expenses that one would have wanted to limit beforehand.

What culture of governance?

For some years now, the issue of reform has intensified in States, particularly in the field of courts of auditors and control institutions. In almost all African countries, populations have demanded more accountability from their governments. Populations, once left out of the conduct of State affairs, have shown a greater interest in how State assets are managed, imposing, through their demonstrations and sometimes acerbic criticisms, significant changes, both in the governance culture of States and in the very dynamics of this governance. This approach, which is both understandable and justified by cultural and social developments, has inevitably led to a set of transformations, sometimes slight and sometimes very brutal. Some more cautious and lucid countries have introduced more or less rigorous control methods accompanied by the necessary communications to reassure, but above all to transform the perception of the State and the relationship with the State, both by those managing assets and by the populations for whom, very often, the relationship with the State has appeared to be very complex, not to say simply complicated in some respects.