In many African countries, the use of international consulting firms has become common practice for developing economic strategies, sectoral plans, and institutional reforms. These services involve significant sums of money. According to estimates from budget documents and reports by international financial institutions, consulting expenditures can represent between 5% and 10% of donor-funded project budgets in some cases, amounting to tens of billions of CFA francs per year for some countries. This outsourcing is often justified by a lack of internal technical capacity or by the requirement of financial partners to use recognized expertise.

This dependence is not without economic consequences. Consulting firms produce diagnoses and roadmaps that are often standardized and sometimes poorly adapted to local administrative, social, or political constraints. In several countries, successive strategies have been layered on top of each other without any real continuity, due to a lack of ownership by national administrations. The cost is therefore not solely financial. It also translates into weak implementation of reforms, delays in projects, and a loss of credibility for public policies that are announced but rarely implemented.

The issue of skills transfer remains central. While some contracts include training components, these often remain marginal compared to the core mission. Audits conducted in several Ministries of Finance and Planning indicate that, five years after the completion of major consulting programs, the dependence remains unchanged, and local teams continue to seek external expertise for similar tasks. This situation perpetuates a vicious cycle where weak capacity justifies new contracts, without a gradual reduction in the use of consultants.

In the medium term, this dynamic puts pressure on economic and budgetary sovereignty. A growing share of public policy design is slipping out of the hands of national administrations, while the resources allocated to consulting are not being invested in the sustainable strengthening of institutions. Some countries are now attempting to rebalance this relationship by capping consulting expenditures, mandating mixed teams with national experts, or making contracts contingent on measurable results in terms of transferred skills. The goal is not to do away with international expertise altogether, but to transform it into a lever for autonomy rather than a source of structural dependence.