| Abstract |
During the last decades, international development assistance was often marked by overlaps, duplication of efforts and rivalry between multitudes of donor organisations. In order to translate the principles of the Paris Declaration into practice in the field of local
governance and decentralisation (LGD), different donor organisations have joined forces on headquarter level and formed a working group, the Development Partners Working Group for Local Governance and Decentralisation (DPWG-LGD)1, which is operating since 2006. InWEnt is hosting the secretariat of the group since 2008 and assigned Wageningen International to organise two lead donor workshops. The workshop drew a cross section of delegates who comprised development partners, consultants, academicians, members of parliament and local governance practitioners. The partner countries included Rwanda, Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda whose experiences were mutually re-enforcing and beneficial. The idea of lead donor meetings is to offer a platform for international exchange for good practices and lessons learnt to donor organisations working in the partner countries, foster the cross-sectoral dialogue in the field of LGD and to contribute to improving aid effectiveness with this offer. At the same time the lead donor meetings aim at discussing possible peer review mechanisms to improve aid effectiveness and harmonisation on headquarter level.
The Ugandan workshop further examines the future role and position of the Decentralisation Development Partner’s Group (DDPG), the platforms for dialogue between Government of Uganda (GoU) and the Development Partners and the future implementation of the Local Government Sector Investment Plan (LGSIP). Moreover the workshop aimed at setting closer relations between the Government of Uganda (GoU) and the Development Partners (DP) by adjusting and renewing the forms and agreements. Several countries were assessed with regards to the choice of the country the lead donor workshops would be held. The most important criteria for the country choice were the commitment and needs of the respective lead donors in the partner countries. The
Decentralisation Development Partners Group in Uganda clearly signalised that there is ademand for such a workshop and actively developed an agenda together with Wageningen International. They organised a multi-stakeholder meeting on harmonisation,
decentralisation and local governance in Kampala, Uganda. The Kampala workshop “Harmonisation, Decentralisation and Local Governance: Enhancing Aid Effectiveness” was held from 6th - 8th October 2009 at the Imperial Royale Hotel.
(authors abstract)
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