Strengthening Local Government Competence for Effective Service Delivery

1. Freeport Declaration on improving local government

2. Improving the competence of councillors and local government staff • Need for civic education to raise the awareness of what local government among the electorate and what to look for when electing their councillors • Knowledge of what the responsibilities of councillor are can assist voters to make informed choices in selecting leaders with the requisite skills • Continuous capacity building efforts for councillors and local government staff is needed to ensure effective service delivery

3. Improving the competence of councillors and staff • Expertise in specialised fields like financial management and integrated planning is needed especially in rural and remote parts of our countries

4. Improving central local relations • Need for political will by all stakeholders to ensure effective partnering for development • Local governments should be regarded as partner in development and not agents of development • Need for the strengthening of partnership between central and local government players

5. Improving central local relationships (Cont...) • Capacity building initiatives to educate both local and central government players to deepen their understanding on effective partnering. • There is need for the existence of strong legal framework but without political will there maybe implementation problems

6. Regional Cooperation • Regional partnerships, exchange of information and good practise ,joint advocacy, collaborative service delivery are important. • Experiences in East Africa where there is regional cooperation at the local government level demonstrate they importance of such an initiative • There is need to demonstrate the link between policy at the regional level and the local level