Growing on lessons learned in Niger
UNCDF and its partners intervene in the Mayahi and Nguigmi department since 2000 through local development programmes.
They have opened a certain number of worksites that the current PADEL programme offers to follow up. Among these, we can notice:
- Setting up of public investments under the project ownership of the local governments with a specific target linked to food security.
- Promotion of productive initiatives in favor of vulnerable groups and the promotion of gender equality.
- Cleaning up of the recovery chain.
- Efficient advocacy to favor the transfer of equalization funds or achieve harmonious partnerships with the technical services and the NGOs operating for the municipality.
These interventions have shown the necessity to make an economic shift to the support of local development in order to improve at the same time the living conditions of the populations but also to raise the revenues of the municipalities through an increase of their fiscal revenue. Thus, the current programme relies on a certain number of successes that have participated to the success of previous PADELs:
- Quality of the grassroots democratization approach and the involvement of the actors whatever their ethnic belonging, level of marginalization is.
- Choice of the stakeholders within the teams and the NGOs' managers to the starting of the actions that have always kept in mind their counseling-support role.
- Accountability of the municipalities in the choice and operationalization of the investments.
- Self-evaluation mechanisms, of monitoring for the objective of putting in practice transparency, the circulation of information and accountability.
- Positive involvement of the traditional holders of power, despite the diverging interests, reservations and lack of understanding.
- Focus placed on the necessary literacy of the concerned actors, women and elected representatives.
To succeed, the UNCDF experience has revealed that the local action must be multifunctional, multi-partners and multi-level. For PADEL, this alliance results in the obligation to:
- Maintain the national and institutional level and the more operational local level, at the same time.
- Involve the public and private actors.
- Favor an integration of the efforts of the decentralized governments and the devolved services.
- Take into account from the start of the needs, interests and the collaborations of all the groups.
- Conduct targeted actions that takes into account all the aspects of territorial development.
- Design actions that construct around the other levels of public action (national, regional, local).
- Encourage all the partners to share their experiences.
- Set-up a monitoring system in which all the local actors participate.