Foto: Creative Commons Mostroneddo
Last December the annual meeting of the Committee on Decentralization and Local Self-Government was held within the framework of the UCLG World Council in Dakar (Senegal). The meeting provided an overview of the activities undertaken by the Committee throughout 2012 and highlighted activities planned for 2013.
This meeting gathered a large number of African local governments and, in this context, the regional expert Ms. Susan Bannister made a presentation on the current state of decentralization and basic services in Africa. Ms. Banister stressed the essential role of African local governments in ensuring the provision of basic services and illustrated the importance of cooperation between local governments in order to improve public governance. Ms. Bannister also added that social inclusion, especially through women's empowerment, is a key point to complete this process successfully.
Regarding this topic, UCLG has developed two reports in the framework of the project "Support the decentralization in Developing Countries" co-financed by the European Commission. Produced as a result of the joint EALGA-UCLG ", the reports are based on the experiences of decentralization in the regions of East Africa and the space of Economic and Monetary Union of West Africa, UEMOA. These publications aim to provide an overview on decentralization and participation of local authorities in the definition of strategies of cooperation for development. You can access both reports in the following links:
• Decentralization and Local Democracy: East Africa Region (available in English)
The UCLG DAL Commission also presented their activities carried out in 2012, including an online course on decentralization, the publication of D+ magazine and an online newsletter. Mention was also made of the support given to the seminar in Tunisia on decentralization and local democracy in the new Constitution. The activities planned for 2013 were also discussed, among which we can highlight the identification of joint initiatives with the Local Finance Committee and collaboration with the Global Observatory on Local Democracy and Decentralization of UCLG. A report was made on the advancement of the 3rd Global Report on Decentralization and Local Democracy GOLD III, still in the process of drafting and scheduled to be launched at the end of 2013.
You can see here the activity report 2012 and the presentation on the State of decentralization in Africa.
For more information:DAL Committee / GOLD