ARIAL – Supporting and Strengthening local government associations at ACP national and regional levels - 28-10-11
The goal of the ARIAL programme is to support the creation and development of national and regional Local Government Associations (LGAs) in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific. The development of LGAs – serving as representative bodies towards national institutions and service providers to their members - is imperative for local government development. Local governments are closest to the daily lives of the people and any successful development policy is dependent on strong local governments.
Specifically, the ARIAL programme focuses on LGAs at the national, regional and sub-continental level in the field of lobbying, communication and provision of services. The associations participate in collective training exercises and receive individual guidance from experts. Next to hands-on capacity building, the regional setting stimulates mutual learning and will increase the training’s effectiveness.
In the end, local government associations are more capable of representing their members’ interests towards national institutions and development partners. ARIAL provides the associations with the necessary tools to strengthen their position vis-à-vis central government and create ownership among the members of a local government association. Consequently, LGAs will improve their role of being a spider in the web in the field of decentralization. Through this, the link between local governments and national stakeholders is improved and development efforts will be more successful.
In November and December 2011, the ARIAL programme organizes the first training in 6 regions. The training addresses the relationship between the local governments, the LGAs and the international development partners, and what the donor community has on offer for local government. This training will have a follow-up, as different LGAs will be visited by experts and the regional umbrellas to provide individual support, especially in the field of discerning the needs of their members. A second training will be organized in June 2012 in which local government associations get together once more in order to turn their findings (needs of their members on the one hand and donor opportunities on the other ) into communication and policy strategies towards national institutions and development partners.
VNG International manages the ARIAL programme and is supported by its partners CLGF (UK), PDM (Benin), MDP (Zimbabwe), UWI (Trinidad and Tobago) and FSPI (Fiji). Each of these partners has extensive experience in the development of LGAs in their region. The programme has been initiated by the ACP Secretariat and is funded by the EU.