LOCAL GOVERNMENT

PERSPECTIVES

NEWSLETTER

August 2006

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Special Issue on Participatory Budgeting

Foreword by George Matovu

The Municipal Development Partnership for Eastern and Southern Africa is gaining ground in supporting local governments to promote participatory practices as a strategy to deepen local democracy and to strengthen decentralized governance. In 2005, MDP-ESA got into a relationship with the World Bank and UN-Habitat to promote participatory budgeting in local government. The initiative has two specific outputs. The first one is the establishment of the Participatory Budgeting Knowledge and Action Support facility for Africa and the second one is the development of a Participatory Budgeting Training Companion.

In its bid to promote participatory budgeting in Africa MDP-ESA has been involved in a number of activities. To start with MDP-ESA has prepared a Website whose domain is: www.assaf.org.zw and a discussion forum: www.mdpafrica.pb.org.zw to support knowledge sharing. In June 2006 MDP-ESA undertook a mission to Porto Alegre, Brazil in order to promote cross-regional constructive dialogue on PB. In August this year, MDP-ESA in cooperation with UNDESA, UNCDF, UNDP and the Government of Lesotho organized a ministerial conference whose theme was “Strengthening competencies for effective local level delivery of services”. The conference which attracted more than 150 participants enabled MDP-ESA to contribute to the efforts of strengthening participatory governance. MDP-ESA is also organizing a session on Participatory Budgeting at the forthcoming Africities Summit in Nairobi, Kenya.

MDP-ESA wishes to thank the World Bank, the Netherlands Government and the UN-Habitat for supporting this initiative.

I hope you will enjoy reading this issue on participatory budgeting.

Thank you

George Matovu
Regional Director
Municipal Development Partnership
Eastern and Southern Africa