Strategic planning and monitoring of municipal development

Helvetas experience in Cameroon and Mali

Decentralisation, which is now up and running in Mali and Cameroon, has to be consolidated by the transfer of certain powers and appropriate resources from the central government to local and regional authorities. The municipality, which is the basic level of decentralisation, has administrative and financial autonomy in managing local affairs. It is responsible in particular for promoting development in the economic, social, health, educational, cultural and sports fields by drawing up, in a participatory way, its economic, social and cultural development plan (PDESC).

In order to put decentralisation into practice, local governments and their support partners are looking for high-quality tools and approaches through which local actors can play their roles to the full. Planning is an important activity for local governments as it creates a reference framework that provides a starting point for the promotion of local development and helps to ensure that municipal actors are working in a consistent and harmonious way. It was against this backdrop that the Swiss Association for International Cooperation (Helvetas) developed a planning approach within its Council Support Programme (CSP) in Cameroon and its Support Programme for the Actors of Decentralisation (PAAD) in Mali.

This case study looks at the ways in which Helvetas put its municipal planning approach into practice in Cameroon and Mali, the lessons learnt from the tool’s design, testing, use and replication and its relevance as a tool for local capacity building in the monitoring and evaluation of decentralisation and local governance.

Full document to download on Pelican Initiative platform (19 pages 210 Ko) www.dgroups.org/groups/pelican/docs/CAMEROUN_MALI_Draft_EN.pdf

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