The broad objective of this component is to promote decentralised co-operation and strengthening of local governments to develop and refine their tools and methods for better service delivery. To the extent that poor performance of municipalities is a result of institutional deficiencies, Phase III will support a program component designed to strengthen the institutional capacities of selected municipalities in the focus countries
Objectives
To strengthen the performance and development of municipal government.
To promoted, design and implement organisational systems that optimise mobilisation and management of municipal resources.
To develop a culture of planning strategically and formulating action plans.
To examine the role of the public and private sectors in service delivery.
To promote and strengthen inter-municipal partnerships and exchanges between municipalities in the North and South.
To strengthen capacities of national and regional municipal associations.
Themes
The themes revolve around issues of improving the state of municipal institutions as well as regulations and incentives and factors for improving performance, including the system of financing and assignment of responsibility areas across levels of local government. These include the following:
Improve the capacity of municipal institutions to address major problem areas facing residents such as urban poverty environmental quality, municipal integrity and identification of the causal factors and solutions.
Develop cases of best practices of effective municipal management that can lead to replication and the adoption of institutional management tools, procedures, and operational guidelines.
Promote inter-municipal decentralised co-operation among municipalities within the region by establishing links among them involving exchange missions between leaders and officials of selected partner municipalities. These will be exposed both to good practices land bad practices in key areas ranging from governance to illegal settlements, vending, housing, and other key issues.
Develop strategic and action development plans for municipalities based on participator, techniques including community representatives.
Develop a subprogram to strengthen local government associations with the objective of raising the effectiveness of local government associations in promoting dialogue, lobbying, and articulating local government initiatives at the national and regiona1 level., To achieve a multiplier impact, MDP will, continue to work with IULAAS as an intermediary institution.
Implementation Strategy
The strategy for direct support to municipalities continues to function as a regional capacity-building facility that provides local governments with resources and know-how to analyse issues and search for solutions to problems related to institutional development, management service delivery, and resource mobilisation. Direct support will link the institutions, to group and individual training programs. Activities of direct support will be implemented when they materialise.
In Phase III, MDP will continue to apply decentralised co-operation as part of direct support for the mutual benefit of Participating municipalities. Decentralised co-operation establishes linkages between municipalities in the South with equivalent institutions in the North. Many municipalities in the North have expressed and demonstrated the wish to support municipalities in Africa. Several Italian municipalities and those of Canada have been involved in developing profitable linkages with, African municipalities. Italian municipalities have. taken the lead in co-operating with municipalities in Ethiopia and Mozambique. MDP has also benefited from the experiences gained by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities which holds successful assessment meetings with its African counterparts.
The major addition in Phase III that African resource municipalities will play a key role in, hosting, reform-minded local governments and transfer their experience through practical onsite activities. This will be especially important for newly elected municipalities that demand prompt and practical technical assistance. Decentralised co-operation will be extended to the promotion of practical learning experiences among municipalities of the region as a component of South-South co-operation.
Expected Impact
a. Successful practices will be adopted by municipalities, merit in municipal operation.
b. Substantive memoranda of understanding of North-South and South-South municipal international co-operation will be in place.
c. Two fully operational national municipal integrity systems will be adopted with key municipalities implementing municipal integrity reforms and practices.
d. Methodologies and capacity for undertaking service delivery assessment to enable performance based management, budgeting and integrity systems will be defined, established and implemented.
Strategic planning will be successfully applied as a tool for local municipal management and development.