Local Economic Development as a Mean of Implementing the Post-2015 Agenda and the SDGs in Africa

Local Economic Development as a Mean of Implementing the Post-2015 Agenda and the SDGs in Africa

A Working Group of the CLGF Conference 2015 - Local Government 2030: Achieving the vision

Wednesday 17th June, 16.00-17.30 Gaborone, Botswana

Working Group- Summery and Conclusion  Context  Overview of Speeches/Presentations  Conclusions and Way Forward

Facilitator: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Purpose of the session: To provide an opportunity for delegates to discuss how Local Economic Development (LED) can contribute towards the achievement of the SDGs in Africa. The session provided a platform for debate, exchange of ideas and experiences with a view to agreeing some core recommendations back to the main conference.

Context: During the past years African Region have made remarkable progress towards achieving the MDGs despite unfavorable initial conditions, and the current continental economic growth remains robust and stands at nearly twice the global average. Despite such progress, Africa’s economic growth is yet to tackle vital issues such as inclusive and sustainable development, vulnerability to natural and economic shocks, income inequalities, and high unemployment especially among the youth. The continent also faces the largest ever growth of unplanned and unmanaged urbanization, which represents new frontiers in the development scape for many African countries.

With the imminent MDG target date of 2015, and the rapid changes in the development context and landscape in many African countries, it is important for the continent to build on the lessons learned and sustain the momentum achieved to date when addressing the challenges of the Post-2015 Agenda.

Lessons learned from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) implementation process have shown that national and local ownership is indispensable for success and consequently that the achievement of critical objectives and challenges of the Post-2015 Agenda will depend on strong local action and leadership embedded in a coordinated and effective multi-level governance system. This is so because local institutions, local economic actors and communities give legitimacy to global/national efforts towards the realization of local and national development outcomes by grounding development choices in the will of the people through popular participation and ownership.

Therefore, among the issues that are critical to the successful implementation and attainment of the Post-2015 Agenda is “localization” – i.e. the need to identify various specific mechanisms, tools, and processes to effectively translate the SDGs into practices at the local level. Among others, LED is considered an essential means to promote the local implementation of the SDGs since it entails the development and consolidation of institutional settings and capacities that are needed to promote integrated sustainable human development and inclusive growth. The LED approach stands out as a proven economic governance toolkit with a large selection of practical experiences from diverse country contexts geared toward tackling many of the development concerns addressed by the MDGs and the future development agenda.

Overview of Speeches/Presentations The Local Economic Development working group session held as part of the Commonwealth Local Governance Forum 2015 provided various views organized around the theme “Local Economic Development as a Mean of Implementing the Post-2015 Agenda and the SDGs in Africa”. The importance of LED for the Post-2015 development agenda and the critical role of local and subnational governments were emphasized in the opening speech addressed by the session moderator Mylène Lavoie from UNDP Regional Center for Africa. Ms. Lavoie explicated the support that will be offered by the United Nations Development Group to countries on the implementation of SDGs into three main areas; mainstreaming: integrate the SDG in national and sub-national development planning, 2|Page

acceleration: identify bottle necks and key drivers for the SDGs within countries, and policy support: strive to enabling policies facilitating SDGs implementation at national and local level. She also highlighted the opportunity of conveying the outcomes of this session into forming a common LED regional vision and positioning on key challenges, and experiences in Africa, to be shared during the Third World Forum of Local Economic Development, taking place in Turin (Italy) on the 13-16 October 2015.

Ms. Lavoie asked the participants to reflect on their experiences and discuss how the LED approach and practices can support the implementation of the SDGs and promote the principles of participation, inclusiveness and accountability at local level. Participants were also asked to list the key challenges and opportunities in the African context for using LED as a mean of implementing/localizing the SDGs, and share key recommendations to be reflected in the Conference outcome document.

The first speaker, Mr. Mohammed Doku, President of the National Association of Local Authorities of Ghana (NALAG), started by defining LED as a process by which public authorities, business, nongovernmental entities, and people work collectively to create better conditions for economic growth and employment generation in a locality. He illustrated the direct and indirect association between implementing an effective LED strategy and achieving the SDGs, citing that LED is a bottom up development paradigm that emphasizes on the improvement in the living condition of local inhabitants.

This improvement in the economic performance of a territory and its livelihood due to the implementation of an LED strategy will support the development efforts to eradicate poverty and hunger. It will result in an increase in the local household income revenue which will subsequently lead to better access to basic necessities like education and healthcare. Local authorities will be able to collect more fees due to the increase in economic activities, reflecting positively on their ability to deliver public service such as access to clean water, sanitation, and clean energy. Moreover, LED strategies have a direct association to Goal 8 of the SDGs, which address the issue of employment and decent work. LED support the expansion of local business and thus creating employment opportunities and enhancing the general working conditions in a territory. Lastly, LED impact can be felt at national level as well; as it facilitates the development of resilience infrastructure and sustainable industries.

He stressed that implementing an effective LED cannot be achieved without developing inclusive regulatory frameworks and development policies that can be easily adapted to local contexts as well as develop the human resources capacity in local governments. Fortunately, Ghana has developed and implemented a LED policy, and both the country’s constitution and local government acts recognize the role of local authorities as development agents.

Mr. Doku later cited some of challenges hindering the implementation of LED, especially the ones facing the development of the local business community in Ghana like the lack of organization, access to business registration and funding services, and poor infrastructures, more specifically transportation.

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He emphasized that achieving LED in Africa requires collective efforts from all development partners; central governments should ensure that adequate funding mechanisms and technical resources are available at the disposal of local authorities, local governments need to prioritize and include LED activities in their day to day economic administration, and international development partners must provide budgetary support and ensure that local government activities are defined in the international development plans to enable the support of national governments to local authorities.

Mr. Doku finally encouraged considering the current decentralization movement in Africa as a basis to develop and implement LED, and called for greater exchange of best practices and lessons learned on decentralization and LED processes between African partners facing similar development challenges.

Speaking next, Mr. Kizito Wangalwa, the Deputy Governor of Busia County, Kenya, and representative of United Regions Organization (ORU FOGAR), started by providing a context to the recent changes in the local governance system in Kenya which resulted in the formation of 47 independent democratically elected county governments. The recent changes in governance drastically had an effect on how LED is managed in Kenya. They enabled counties to independently set their own priorities based on their unique economic conditions. Despite initial tension between national and local governments when the changes were implemented two years ago, counties now are more strategically positioned in national and global arenas, and many sectoral clusters were formed by different counties to maximize their economic competitiveness.

Mr. Wangalwa listed the main challenges that, in his opinion, Kenya is facing with regards to the implementation of the LED agenda, like: Lack of available information for planning: currently, the data generated by the national government is not being disaggregated to local governments, therefore, most local planning is based on perception and not on realities and actual conditions; Short-term development planning due to the (3-5 years) election cycle for local governments. As many officials are more interested in implementing short-term visible programs rather than focusing on long term to medium term development solutions; Weak technical capacities of officials in local governments, which result in series of isolated actions/projects rather than an integrated system of local development; fourthly, lack of LED awareness in local communities that can help enable clear identification of development priorities and establish accountability; and finally, existing unproductive competition between actors that could be tackled by well defining/attributing roles in line with LED. Lastly, Mr. Wangalwa, asked to not to consider LED or the SDGs as standalone concepts but to integrate them in the overall ongoing development planning and activities.

The final speaker, Mr. Vincent Hungwe, LED Advisor - UNDP Botswana, underlined the increasing global recognition of LED as one of the key tools to effectively localize national visions and plans. He recognized and highlighted the historical and pivotal role of national government in driving development and growth, and offered an insight on the case of Botswana, where national government was able to achieve major progress in all MDGs and reduce poverty from 49% to19.3% in only two decades. However, despite such progress, there are recognizable limits to the national government capacity to remain the only entrepreneurial agent of development and to address emerging challenges related to uneven growth among territories, and existing socio-economic inequality and exclusion.

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For development to be inclusive and impactful, it needs to be owned by all levels of government, as well as other development actors (private sector, civil society, local governments), as LED is a consensus seeking exercise.

Mr. Hungwe highlighted how LED can represent an alternative source of economic growth that is usually overlooked by national governments. He encouraged national governments to identify the reality that all levels of governance are distinctive and that localities need to operate autonomously.

This does not suggest their independence from national government planning, but emphasizes on recognizing the distinctiveness of the various government tiers that are sufficiently interdependent in order to cooperate and optimize their development results.

Finally, Mr. Hungwe asked to capitalize on the newly launched 2036 Botswana vision and present the LED approach as a mean to translate it into reality. He also underlined the vitality of localizing the SDGs and the necessity to develop instruments and tools to ensure that the nationalized domesticated SDGs are actually reduced to the local level when it comes to planning and budgeting.

Conclusions and Way Forward The LED working group session provided an opportunity for local and national authorities, local and regional government associations, and international development actors to explore how diverse practical LED experiences in Africa can provide guidance and inform the process of localizing the SDGs. Participants in the Working Group acknowledged the positioning of the 2015 Commonwealth Local Governance Conference as part of an ongoing process of recognizing LED role in the international development framework. Starting with the 2011 Commonwealth Local Governance Conference that produced the 2011 Cardiff Consensus for Local Economic Development, which identified LED as a key concern for local governments. In the same year, the 1st World Forum of Local Economic Development in Seville raised attention to the need to better link local, sub-national, and national governments and advance territorial development strategies. In 2013, the 7th CLGF Conference took aim at influencing the post 2015 agenda in producing the Kampala Declaration on Developmental Local Government and the Munyonyo Statement on local government’s role in the post-2015 development agenda. The 2nd World Forum of LED followed in the same year in Foz de Iguaçu, generating unprecedented exposure and global dialogue around LED and proposals for a more permanent global coordinating mechanism on LED. Lastly, on January 2014, the “Local Economic Development for Sustainable Territorial Development” side event, which coincided with the 7th session of the Open Working Group on the SDGs, provided a space to share views on integrating LED concerns in the Post-2015 Agenda.

The Working Group speakers highlighted the potential of LED as an essential means to promote the local implementation of the SDGs, since it entails the development and consolidation of institutional settings and capacities that are needed to promote integrated sustainable human development and inclusive growth. They also identified the main bottlenecks and difficulties challenging the mainstreaming of the local dimensions in the implementation of the future SDGs. In particular, the following recommendations were put forward:

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Establish adequate legislative and fiscal frameworks: develop and implement laws, policies and mechanisms that adapt and integrate the needs and priorities of local contexts, to support the development of a conducive environment for LED. Adopt an integrated and inclusive approach of development for LED: by recognizing the inherent interdependency nature of LED that integrates institutional, social, economic, environmental dimensions as well as existing functions such as policy and regulatory frameworks, services and supply chain stages.

Further sensitize and empower local communities: enablement of local stakeholders, through strengthening their capacities and institutions, and the establishment of dynamic processes based on dialogue and interaction between actors within and across territories, to support their role as the primary drivers of LED and crucial actors for localizing the SDGs. Support business development: Support the provision and the access to comprehensive services and support to the local business community.

Plan and implement LED through partnerships and coordination: through the pursuit of multi-level and multi-dimensional LED action through a combination of institutional dialogue, networking and partnership building between different types and levels of actors (RECs, national governments and local governments, private sector, etc), and the identification of their respective roles.

Ensure full integration of LED into the national visions and plans: mainstreaming LED practices in national policies, and support the development of diversified local economies which can contribute to an inclusive national economic growth and establish accountability.

Establish inclusive local monitoring systems: By strengthening the inclusiveness and the overall accountability of the LED process, through the facilitation of the flow of monitoring information between different levels of governance and among the different actors involved in development cooperation at the local level. Effective local monitoring systems will not only help to track progress against commitments but also strengthen the ownership within all parts of the society as well as foster the dialogue between governments and civil society.

Define benchmarks for localizing the SDGs: identify various specific mechanisms, tools, and processes to effectively translate the SDGs into practices at the local level.

These recommendations were integrated into the CLGF Conference outcomes (the Gaborone Declaration) and will feed into the upcoming 3rd World Forum on Local Economic Development, organized by UNDP through the ART Initiative, ILO, UCLG, ORU FOGAR, SEBRAE and the Municipality and Metropolitan City of Turin, to be held in Turin (Italy) in October 2015.

UNDP will further discuss with CLGF and other partners on the way to support the implementation of these recommendations for ensuring that LED can contribute to the implementation/localization of the SDGs.

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