In July 2007, UNCDF and UNDP launched a new initiative to reduce poverty in Sierra Leone through the 'Kenema District Economic Recovery Programme' (KDERP). Working as a partner with the Government of Sierra Leone, the UN organizations are seeking to foster local economic development in the country, beginning with a pilot project in Kenema district. The organizations will develop the capacity of both the district and town councils to collect local revenue and provide services and infrastructure. Within the local development structure, KDERP seeks to enhance the prospects for local economic development, the UN has created it as a pilot programme and based on its success, we will support its roll-out and up-scaling nationwide so that the entire country can reap the benefits of economic recovery. The programme has three components:

• Component 1 is about economic recovery, the role of women and young people in that process and the need to provide interventions to support increased agricultural productivity and the marketing of its produce. A feature of this component is to harness the Inclusive Finance initiative, already in place through a separate UNCDF initiative in the country.
• Component 2 is about local government planning, budgeting, implementation and review process, to generate infrastructure and services to support socio-economic development. An underlying theme is that of a 'bottom-up' and output-based approach to the public expenditure management cycle.
• Component 3 concerns upscaling and replicating the pilot nationwide. This will involve influencing national policy on aspects of local development, within a decentralization framework. The Minister for Development and Economic Planning stressed that he hoped to see discernible results within two years to justify the widening of the programme to other locations and the attraction of other donor partners."

• Sierra Leone is the second most impoverished nation on earth, according to UNDP’s Human Development Report of 2006. This desperate level of poverty and the dominance of the agricultural sector suggest a socio-economic entry point for future local development. In this post-conflict country about two-thirds of the population exist, mostly at subsistence level. Within the local development paradigm, this programme therefore seeks to intervene in order to enhance the prospects for local economic development. The rural-urban linkage will be a key feature, hence the selection of both Kenema district and town councils. This recognises the crucial importance of the regional market centre within a nation. Raising local economic activity and resulting increases in enterprise and household income will allow for improved local government revenues and consequent improvements in local services.
• Local government is predominantly, in a parlous state. Beyond local economic development, the programme will give impetus to the local development process by introducing a local development fund (LDF) and wider initiatives on development planning and public expenditure management (PEM) for local government (LG). In Sierra Leone, both matters are already embraced, from policy, legal and guidance perspectives. What is open to this programme is for UNCDF’s extensive experience in both LDF management, planning and PEM to be brought to bear to make local government actually work; the hardest part being in the doing. For LG to work successfully, it needs a vibrant local economic base from which to start completing the virtuous circle of local development; increased revenues and improved infrastructure and service provision. In the context of the twin causes of the core problem (Lack of economic development; Inability to provide infrastructure and services) the programme must accommodate a time-span sufficient to move from wholesale recovery to sustainable development.

• The principle governing the proposed management arrangements is to integrate this programme with the current decentralization initiatives of government. The decentralisation secretariat (DecSec) operates from Freetown (under Ministry of Local Government and Community Development and MoF). Each council also has a ‘DecSec coach’ to support client councils to prepare development plans. The programme management proposals are therefore to merge with these arrangements, thereby (a) increasing the prospects of immediate impact at the council level and (b) ensuring maximum influence on the policy, law, regulations and guidelines being prepared and refined, at the national level.

• The project team will have two responsibilities in M&E. The first is to support the two councils in developing an M&E counterpart to their development plans, strategies and budgets. The councils must be able to report on all three, both in terms of intentions and results. The results – the impact of all councils’ spending (from local sources, government transfers and donors) – must be understood and made known to all. Here, it is the local system of planning and evaluation, and the information systems to support that understanding, that must be harnessed. The second M&E system is that concerning UNCDF expenditure. Here, the requirement is to report corporately, on the deployment and application of UNCDF (including partner funds, channeled through the UNCDF business unit).

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• Resource Mobilization