AFRICAN REGIONAL SEMINAR ON PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING

From 10 to 14 March 2008, 150 delegates from several Sub-Saharan Africans countries, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and North America will gather in Durban, South Africa to share views and experiences on how to improve citizens’ participation in budget setting at sub-national levels in Africa. The Seminar will be held at Ethekwini Municipal Council and participants will include: Ministers, government officials, heads of local authorities, and representatives of development agencies.

The Seminar is designed to provide opportunity for participants from African to get to know each other, learn about each other’s interests and about the kind of progress that is being made on issues of Participatory Budgeting. Besides, they will have the opportunity to hear from their counterparts from other Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America about their experience with Participatory Budgeting.

As democratization and decentralization reforms advance around the globe, State and non-State actors are creating new channels of dialogue in local governance. Under this context, Participatory Budgeting (PB) is rapidly gaining attention from governments, civil society, and international development agencies as an effective platform and tool for strengthening transparency, voice, and accountability in revenue generation, expenditure planning, and delivery of public services and infrastructure. From an experimental innovation in Brazil, PB initiatives have been growing exponentially in many countries in Latin America, Europe, and Asia, and more recently in Africa. Lessons from these experiences have shown that PB is an effective mechanism to increase transparency, voice, and accountability in local governance. PB, thus, opens real opportunities in Africa towards enhancing trust between state and non-state actors in public resource management, with the potential to improve tax compliance, fight corruption, reduce poverty, and promote economic growth.

The overall objective of the Seminar therefore, is to bring together key representatives from African institutions which are committed to participatory budgeting in the continent, offering an opportunity to share experience, strengthen dialogue, and build lasting peer-to-peer collaboration efforts. The Seminar will give specific attention to policy reforms that increase budget transparency and demystification, voice, and independent oversight and monitoring in public expenditure.

During the Seminar, a Peer-to-Peer Mutual Learning Program will be launched. The Pilot will see African local authorities, civil society organizations, and academic institutions establishing partnerships with their counterparts especially from Latin America in the area of participatory budgeting. In the past 20 years, Latin America has made significant progress in the area of participatory budgeting and local authorities are eager, not only to share their experience and learn about the Africa’s experience, but are also ready to participate in capacity building programs and exchange of information in participatory budgeting. It is envisioned that the delegates from the African continent will partner with each other to form clusters, and each cluster will subsequently pair up with one or more Latin American institutions to develop a preliminary work plan proposal on a peer-to-peer mutual learning activities.

The Conference is organized by the Harare based Municipal Development Partnership Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (MDP-ESA), with support from The World Bank; The World Bank Institute; Trust Fund for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development; Swiss Development Cooperation; CommGAP; ANSA-Africa; UN-HABITAT; New York University - Wagner School Of Public Administration; and The Africa Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) and will be hosted by Municipality of Ethekwini (Durban),

For further information, please visit: http://www.worldbank.org/africanpbseminar/ or http://www.asaaf.org.zw Or contact: George Matovu gmatovu@mdpafrica.org.zw; or Dr. Takawira Mumvuma tmumvuma@mdpafrica.org.zw Municipal Development Partnership for Eastern and Southern Africa, Tel.: +263 4 774385/6.