Integrating the food and nutritional security in local development plans
The capacity of local authorities in promoting food and nutritional security in their territory largely depends on the quality of the planning processes at the local level and the analytical and operative capacities. Building the capacities of local governments in exercising their key competences for a sustainable development in their territory is thus crucial. Even more importantly, local authorities must implement consulting and negotiating mechanisms for the development of public-private partnerships focused around economic development and other initiatives linked to food security.
Most countries of intervention of the F4F program in sub-Saharan Africa have engaged themselves in decentralization processes which transfer important competences to the local authorities. One of the program’s objectives is therefore to lead local governments to have, in the context of decentralization; the institutional and organizational capacities to assume the delegations of project management capacities for local investments and have citizens participate in the local development.
Development of tools and planning documents
The support-advice device of the F4F programme allows a better formatting of the services expected from the local partners. In particular, a toolbox is constituted for each project for:
- Designing the instruments of planning and budgeting;
- Formulating and defending micro projects;
- Mastering management procedures of the different financing tools;
- Managing equipments, etc.
The F4F programme plays a facilitating role in the designing of planning documents and the participative process generates, in general, three types of documents with the local partners:
- Local development plan (PDC) qui constitue un outil d’orientation et de cadrage à long terme couvrant une période de cinq à six ans.
- Multi-annual Investment Programme which is the operationalization of the local development plan through the programming of the investment needs and the resources to be mobilized within the next three years.
- Annual Investment Programme which acts as a program budget for the year and allows the implementation of the local development plan through the management approach focused on the results. This approach infers an annual evaluation of local performances in order to appreciate the level of progress achieved in meeting the local development objectives.