The city of Beira has daunting challenges. It is prone to experience the effects of climate change and recurring cyclones have become a reality. At the same time a growing number of people are settling in the city coming from the countryside, who still need to get used to life in the city and adapt from what they are used to in a rural context. The growing informal settlements have led to the fact that two thirds of the city consist of informal peri-urban areas around the 'cement city', with unfavourable living conditions often located in areas at risk of flooding.
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On Tuesday, May 2nd, 2023, VNG International was received by its sister association in Benin, the National Association of Beninese Municipalities (ANCB). Its President and Mayor of Cotonou, Luc Sètondji ATROKPO opened the dialogue on the new relationship between the two associations and their commitment to a fruitful partnership together.
The wider objective of the project is to design a sub national pooled financing mechanism for local governments and cities in Uganda and build their capacity to operationalize it.<br />
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The Land Reform for Agricultural Productivity (LRAP) project, funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), is led by the Millennium Challenge Account Togo (OMCA-Togo) to support the Togolese government in its land reform process and the operationalisation of the land and property code (Law n°2018-005 of 14 June 2018). The LRAP project will ultimately improve the security of land tenure with a view to increasing investment in the agricultural sector. It is implemented over a basic period of 12 months and an optional period of 31 months.<br />
The Strategic Partnership between the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and VNG International is 5-year programme, focused on 4 thematic priorities: Security & Rule of Law, Migration, Local Revenue Mobilisation, and Integrated Water Management. This programme, called the Sustainable Development through improved Local Governance (SDLG) programme, is currently being implemented in 9 countries (Burundi, Mali, Palestina, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda, Iraq, and Mozambique). <br />
On July 8th the Burundian Association of Municipalities (ACO-BURUNDI) organised its yearly conference ‘La Journée de la Commune’, the day of the commune, financed by the SDLG programme. The Sustainable Development through improved Local Governance (SDLG) Programme in Burundi aims to empower citizens to be better informed and claim accountability to engage in inclusive decision-making. It is a programme that capitalises on the results of the previous IDEAL programme that ran from 2017-2021.
The PartiCiP program, phases I and II, has created a dynamic for participatory democracy and has made major progress on this issue of decentralisation. It is now time to put these achievements in the exercise of grassroots democracy at the service of the second challenge of decentralisation: local development.
The Reforme project aims to improve financial governance in Bénin, both on the local and national level, and to link to the 2030 Agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations on the basis of neutral, reliable, factual and accessible statistical data that reports on progress. The Agenda 2030 statistics system will therefore evolve towards transparent publication of data on a single digital platform and ensure that data from all 77 Beninese communes are integrated.<br />
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The project aims to achieve the following objective: <br />
On wednesday 5 october, SDLG officially launched its programme in Mali. VNG International presented the programme and the results of the gender-conflict, PEA and stakeholder studies that were done during the inception phase.
The programme takes into account several issues that local governments face in the increasingly challenging context in Mali.