This report has three parts. Part 1 provides an overview of Public Expenditure Management (PEM) issues in Africa. It focuses in some detail first on the concept of the MTEF as an essential ingredient of PEM systems in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. Section 3, Part 1, examines the issue of coordination at the centre, a key factor in determining the efficacy of PEM in general and the budget decision-making process in particular. Section 4 analyses whether the problems of PEM in Africa are linked to the inherited colonial systems. Finally, section 5 looks at how PEM systems and MTEFs in particular are being linked to poverty reduction programmes in African countries. Public expenditure is one of the critical ingredients of a countrys development. To ensure that public expenditure is efficient and effective, it is essential that resource allocation decisions are underpinned by sound analysis and that a well-designed set of institutions, systems, processes, and a performance focus guide budget formulation and execution. Public expenditure issues touch on virtually every aspect of a countrys development management as the budget is almost everywhere a central mechanism in translating policies into results on the ground. Sustainable poverty reduction, for example, will always require informed and well functioning resource allocation processes - due to their impact on macroeconomic stability, the allocation of resources to strategic priorities, and the efficiency and effectiveness with which policies are implemented.