FEDERAL MUNICIPAL INTERNATIONAL
COOPERATION PROGRAMME
PRESENTATION PAPER
2014-2016 Phase
GENERAL STRATEGY
The Municipal International Cooperation Programme (MIC) is an instrument of the Belgian
Development Co-operation Agency, conceived and implemented by the Union of the Cities and
Communes of Wallonia (UVCW) and the Association of the City and Communes of the Brussels-Capital
Region (AVCB). As such, it is coherent with:
- the Belgian International Cooperation Act of 19 March 2013;
- the political and strategic orientations of the Belgian Co-operation Agency, at the sectorial,
thematic and geographical levels alike.
In this case, as institutional strengthening is part of the relevant development criteria, the fight against
poverty should be conceived from the specific viewpoint of the strengthening of the municipal
institution in the South. One of the components of the complex phenomenon that poverty represents
is indeed inadequate access of the population to citizenship, and therefore also to the majority of
public goods and services, and more particularly to local ones.
Thus, the particularity of the MIC Programme is to contribute, through city-to-city partnerships, to the
strengthening of the capacities of the local institutions in the South for taking charge of their own
development. As in the North, this strengthening of the local level is based on three non dissociable
pillars:
- 1st pillar: good political governance,
- 2nd pillar: efficient administration,
- 3rd pillar: citizen participation in the decision-making process.
The Associations would thus like to take up the specific challenge that is represented by good
governance at the local level in the South, recognized as a vector of development.
COUNTRY PARTNERS AND CO-OPERATION SECTORS
From a sectorial point of view, the Associations have made the strategic choice - and this is one of the
originalities of the Programme that they are developing - that the Belgian municipal partners and those
of the South agree in principle, per country, on one (maximum two) common specific objective(s) and
thus, de facto, on one or two sectors of intervention. These objectives and results to be jointly achieved
are defined in a logical framework realized at country level.
The conclusions of the previous monitoring exercises, external evaluations and assessment workshops,
as well as of the Southern partners’ consultation processes, have enabled the pertinence of the choice
of the country partners and the selected sectors to be confirmed:
- Burkina Faso: civil status,
- Benin: local administrative management (civil status, land register, local taxation strategies, HRM)
as support for the financial policies,
- Morocco: social action,
- DRC: civil status,
- Senegal: local economic development.
TARGET GROUPS
The Programme’s target groups are the local elected officials and the municipal services concerned by
the chosen sector of intervention, as well as, but less directly, the communes’ local partners, i.e.:
- the associations on the ground with which the communes in the South are seeking synergies and
on which they rely, if applicable, for the implementation of their public service mission;
- the supervisory authorities, central or decentralized, due to the fact that the development of a
local government is leading them to get their organization, legislation and practices to evolve (as
revealing structural impact).
OPERATIONAL STRATEGY
The following diagram presents the main lines of the MIC Programme’s operational strategy. We are
detailing the fundamentals of this strategy below.
In general, the Programme’s overall objective consists of two complementary parts:
A.
-
the strengthening of the capacities of the local institutions in the South (left-hand part of the
diagram below);
-
the empowerment of those institutions in the conduct of their development (right-hand part of
the diagram below).
SECTORIAL CONCENTRATION
GEOGRAPHICAL CONCENTRATION
MUNICIPAL INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIP
COUNTRY PLATFORM
Strengthening of the capacities of the local institutions of the South
The acquisition of new capacities on the part of the communes in the South is due to complex long-term
processes that require an efficient approach. Furthermore, the guarantee that these acquisitions will be
exploited efficiently requires the choice of a global approach. At every level, coherency is essential.
SECTORIAL
Thus, the capacities are strengthened in the context of a sectorial choice shared by all the city-to-city
partnerships over the same country and, although taking place on a communal scale (bottom-up), this
strengthening respects the strategic orientations adopted by the latter’s national authorities. A unique
logical country-specific framework stems therefrom. This is enshrined in the Co-operation Agency’s
strategic orientations, themselves based on those of their national partners in the South.
This support-advice is deployed from peer to peer (politicians and administrative/technical agents)
within each communal partnership and thus supports an on-the-ground training rationale.
The changes operated in the policies and operating processes of the administration of the commune of
the South are made visible to the population. The image - often negative – of the public services in the
eyes of the citizens must indeed be improved and the repercussions of the payment of tax in terms of
public services and facilities must be more visible (taxpayer compliance concept).
B.
MUNICIPAL INT'L PARTNERSHIP
In the selected sectorial context, each of the Belgian communes intervenes with its partner, taking
account of local reality, in providing support and -advice in the choice of appropriate operational
solutions that ought to ensure the appropriate know-how for the latter. This support-advice involves in
particular active coordination in the Belgian commune.
CONCENTRATION
In this context, the Belgian partner communes make their own specific competences available to the
municipalities in the South in response to the structural development strategy that has been
formalized in the Communal Development Plans (CDP). Thus, this Programme supports the
implementation of certain priorities that have been identified in the CDP.
The empowerment of the local institutions in the South in the conduct of their development
The durability of the knowledge and experience is based on the concern of increasing the partner
communes’ autonomy. The MIC Programme wants to focus on the strengthening of the capacities of the
actors in the South to take responsibility for the whole process, from the initial diagnosis to selfevaluation.
This support brought to the communes in the South, which can thus be better coordinated, is also real
support for their advocacy for an adaptation of the legal and regulatory texts as well as of the practices
in force at the (supra-)local level.
The critical mass of the communes that have joined the Programme (more than forty between 2008
and 2014) furthermore confers on them a weight and a visibility at the national level which enable
them to take part, in a driving role (bottom-up), in the decentralization processes.
COUNTRY PLATFORM
Thus, the MIC Programme will be used for further extension of the networking thanks to the
management, as a platform or as communities of communes, of the mutual resources of all kinds, and
in order to develop, at the four corners of the countries, pilot new skills centres. It will also support the
existing associations of municipalities in the South in their aim of disseminating the good practices and
of encouraging their widest possible transfer, at the national and/or the sub-regional level.
GEOGRAPHICAL CONCENTRATION
But, whatever the envisaged operational arrangements, this ambition of empowerment of the
communes in the South in the management of their development involves work coordinated at the
partner-country level, already previously initiated thanks to geographical concentration. All the
partnerships for a given country thus join forces around common results, visible locally, in the selected
sector or sectors, where, as we have said above, the Belgian communes have proven expertise, but also
where the beneficiary communes can share between themselves, according to their mutual “forces”,
their own specific means, knowledge, networks, and so on, which may be enhanced in the matter
concerned.
MUNICIPAL INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION PROGRAMME - OPERATIONAL STRATEGY DIAGRAM
Strengthening of the capacities of the local institutions in the
South
Contribution of the North
to
Contribution of the South
… take charge of their own development
Contribution of the South
SECTORIAL CONCENTRATION
Contribution of the North
GEOGRAPHICAL CONCENTRATION
Local development
strategies identifying
structural priorities
Advocacy (legitimized) for fair
and sustainable municipal
development, driving force of
decentralization
Support coordinated with all
the stakeholders and with
other organizations involved




Accompaniment in
operational choices in the
light of local realities
Development (visible) of
modi operandi specific to the
communal institution
Development of pilot
communal skill centres spread
throughout the country
Initiation of networking
thanks to structured external
resources management
(human and other)
Provision of
significant
differentiated skills

MUNICIPAL INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIP


COUNTRY PLATFORM