The Local Government Association (LGA) recently hosted a meeting of local government associations from across the world, which focussed on local government's role in aid effectiveness and improved coordination of local government development activities.

United Cities and Local Government (UCLG), the global body representing local government, held its Capacity and Institution Building meeting in London in June this year, which brought together local government representatives active in overseas development work from over 15 different cities, regions and countries.

The two day programme looked at the contribution that local government is making towards improving aid effectiveness, in particular via the coordination of local government work in country. This has involved the development of in country pilot programmes aimed to better manage local government work and resources from different countries and to help partner councils to take more ownership of programmes in their locality.

The pilot programme has initially targeted the countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, Nicaragua and Ghana, where local government is particularly active. Initial progress has been seen in improved coordination of strategic planning activities, a greater awareness of the need for ownership by overseas partners, the development of complimentary projects (to avoid doubling up of activity) and shared resources for training allowing wider access. UCLG has also developed an online database which captures decentralised cooperation activities globally.

The working group participants also joined a session which compared the different ways in which decentralised cooperation is approached and supported by central government. Among the many examples, participants heard from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, who receive $10-12m annually from the central development department, CIDA, for decentralised cooperation on a local level in terms of city-to-city cooperation, but also at a national level between local government associations. The resources provided by local government are measured as an in-kind contribution and CIDA matches this contribution with funding.

The Dutch local government agency, VNG, receive 7m Euros for technical cooperation activities and in addition to this run a consultancy arm that bids for projects. The French organisation, Cities Unies France, decribed the fact the it is obligatory for municipalities to spend 1% of their water and sanitation budgets on international water projects. It is estimated that around 200m Euros are spent on municipal international cooperation in France of which 75% is self financed. Cofinancing of 11m Euros comes from the French Ministry.

The Department for International Development was represented and gave participants an overview of the current UK priorities and direction of travel for international development. The LG Alliance Chair, Richard Shaw, presented some of the current UK local government work and highlighted the potential to increase the role that UK local government plays in development and to learn from some of our overseas counterparts.

If your council is currently involved in a project overseas that you think should be included in the pilot programme, or could feature on our projects map, get in touch and tell us more.