The African Association of Accountants General (AAAG) has increasingly received requests from member countries for examples of Public Financial Management (PFM) Acts to guide the drafting, review or modernisation of national legislation. This demand reflects a common reform priority across the continent: countries want PFM laws that strengthen fiscal discipline, improve transparency, clarify accountability, support service delivery, and enable credible reporting of public resources.
The purpose of these guidelines is not to encourage countries to copy another jurisdiction’s law. African countries operate under different constitutions, legal traditions, decentralisation models, public sector structures, languages, fiscal capacities and reform trajectories. A useful PFM law must therefore be anchored in international good practice, while remaining flexible enough to fit common law, civil law and mixed legal systems across Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone Africa. These guidelines provide a continental reference point. They identify the minimum thematic areas that should be addressed in a modern PFM Act, explain the policy rationale for each area, and set out the scope, objectives, principles and core drafting requirements for each recommended part of the legislation. They also provide adaptation notes to assist countries that use different institutional.
