HESPI organized a workshop for senior and middle level leadership to create awareness on the significance of sound PFM for government officials of the South Sudan and Somalia under the heading “Good Governance, Leadership and Institution building for senior government officials of Somalia and South Sudan”. This high level seminar conducted in Addis Ababa, in March 2014, included Ministers and top level civil servants of the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) and the government of South Sudan. Representatives of the ministries responsible for PFM, the Public Accounts and Finance Committees of the national legislatures and other key officials of other government agencies participated in the seminar. Important issues in rebuilding post-conflict nations were addressed including the role of leadership in PFM in post-conflict countries, the role of leaders in state reconstruction, and the importance of good financial governance. Also, sound management in post-conflict countries, experiences sharing from successful countries like Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia, and technical aspects and processes of rebuilding institutions in the context of post-conflict reconstruction were among the topics addressed at the Seminar. A range of lessons were drawn on how to establish and build effective institutions and useful recommendations made on how to ensure better leadership and governance in the process of institutions and nation building processes at large in South Sudan and Somalia. The South Sudanese legislators went back and made presentation on the seminar to their Parliament and created strong political will to implement the recommendations. The Seminar evaluation indicated that the participants went back with the policy recommendations distilled from the scholarly papers presented and discussions. Most of the participants were enthusiastic and showed seriousness to adopt the seminar recommendations. HESPI also used this gathering as an opportunity to disseminate other policy documents and through sideline meetings, tried to explore capacity building needs assessment with the decision makers. Therefore, this activity was assessed by the participants and the resource persons as very successful
