A two-day workshop grouping participants from 16 countries began in Yaounde on wednesday.

Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa is currently working out better ways of gender mainstreaming in the efficient management of public finances of member countries for the socio-economic development of the sub-region. Over 16 supreme State auditors (Gender Development Focal Points) from 16 countries under the banner, Regional Council for the Training of Supreme Audit Institutions in Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa (CREFIAF), began meeting at the Yaounde Hilton Hotel yesterday October 26 to learn best practices for the dream to come true.

The two-day Yaounde workshop, organised by CREFIAF in partnership with the German International Cooperation (GIZ), seeks to instil honesty, transparency and efficiency in the management of public finances across the 23 member countries of CREFIAH. Presiding at the opening ceremony, Cameroon’s Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Supreme State Audit, Siegfried David Etame Massoma, who doubles as the President of the Regional Committee for the Institutional Strengthening of CREFIAF, said involving everybody, male and female, to ensuring an efficient management of public finances is irresistible. “Our vision is to improve on the management of public finances and this cannot be done if gender is not respected and everyone given equal opportunity,” he said.

Like the project Coordinator, Emma Theresia Kellner, the German Ambassador to Cameroon, Reinhard Buchholz, said waste and corruption are vices that ruin States. Training stakeholders unto efficiency, they said, is primordial for sustainable growth, the least of which is not strengthening regional cooperation in Africa. The opening ceremony was attended among others by Cameroon’s Minister of Women’s Empowerment and the Family, Pr. Abena Ondoa née Obama Marie-Thérése.