Cooperating locally to act globally - Southern expectations and European perspectives

European Development Days

Parallel workshop organised by the Practitioners' Network

Monday, 17 November 2008

Participants were :

• Mr Mohamed Ag Erlaf (Director General, ANICT Mali)
• Mr Tarik Kabbage (Mayor of Agadir, Morocco)
• Mr Koos Richelle (Director General, EuropeAid)
• Mr Jean-Michel Severino (CEO, AFD)
• Mr Wolfgang Kroh (Managing Director, KfW Entwicklungsbank)
• Mr Juan Pablo de Laiglesia (Director, AECID)
• Mr Petr Jelinek (Director of CzDA)
• Mr Roland Ries (Mayor of Strasbourg)

 Moderator :

• Mr Amobé Mévégué, Journalist (RFI)

The workshop was attended by a numerous and diverse audience, with representatives from the civil society, local authorities from the South and from the North, European public aid actors, Member States etc.

The panellists’ contributions were preceded by a presentation of the Network by Mr Jelinek (director of CzDA, president of the Network) and by a welcome speech by Mr Ries, Mayor of Strasbourg, who also presented the merits of the trilateral partnership which has been established between the city of Jacmel (Haiti), the city of Strasbourg and AFD.

The representatives from Southern local entities, Mr Ag Erlaf and Mr Kabbage, reported about their respective experience with regard to the issues at stake and the modalities of decentralisation, in two very different situations : from the point of view of a local agency financing a multiplicity of, mostly small, Malian cities and for a medium-size Moroccan city in the context of a, only partial, decentralisation of powers. 

In response, the directors of the European practitioners expressed their points of view about their roles in supporting the decentralisation processes. They underlined the size of the challenges development actors are faced with, with growing urbanisation and hence, the critical importance of developing partnerships between local authorities and Aid actors and making use of new financing mechanisms. The conditions of a sustainable management of local investments and the complementarity of tools and aid modalities delivered by the European development practitioners were also among the main subjects which were at the centre of discussions.