Entebbe Capacity Building Workshop

City Development Strategy: Bukoba | Entebbe | Homa Bay | Kampala | Kisumu | Musoma
Workshops:Entebbe | Kampala | Kisumu | Musoma| Meetings: Kisumu| Documents:Publications

Introduction

The Entebbe Training of Trainers (ToT) Capacity Building Workshop held on 15th – 19th July 2005 was a follow-up of the Kampala Induction Workshop to induct three more cities into the ongoing Lake Victoria CDS programme.

The Kampala Workshop inducted three more cities, namely, Bukoba (Tanzania), Entebbe (Uganda) and Homa Bay (Kenya) to the CDS process. The Kampala Workshop introduced the CDS concept to the three Second Generation cities and shared experiences and lessons learnt from the Pioneer CDS cities. While sharing the experiences with the Pioneer CDS cities CDS preparation, it emerged that there were critical areas and capacity gaps that needed to be addressed to encourage the cities and local communities prepare quality CDS documents and collectively own the process. Arising from the observations and discussions held during the Kampala workshop, it was agreed that a ToT Capacity Building Workshop be conducted.

Entebbe Workshop participants comprised senior council officials, the CDS focal point official, and stakeholder's representatives from the six Lake Victoria CDS cities. The three Second Generation cities had 10 participants each while the Pioneer CDS cities had 3 participants each. It was felt that more information and knowledge of the CDS process was useful even to the Pioneer CDS cities so that they may undertake the critical stage of implementing the CDS action plans more efficiently and effectively.

The CDS initiative aims to build capacities among the cities that have undergone CDS process with the aim of twinning them with other lake region local authorities to fast track the CDS process so that as many local authorities as possible may undergo the programme within minimum time and resources. Among the lessons learned is that local authorities lack the capacity to champion sustainable development since the development planning approach tends to champion physical development without necessarily relating it with inclusive governance, environment and poverty, which are unfortunately the biggest challenges facing cities in developing countries.

Lake Victoria Clean Up Week

The Entebbe Workshop had been planned to coincide with the climax of the Lake Victoria Clean Up Week organized by UN HABITAT, LVRLAC, the East African Communities' Organization for Management of Lake Victoria Resources (ECOVIC) and the Entebbe District Wildlife Association (EDWA). The aim of the Clean Up Week is to create more awareness of the environmental degradation of Lake Victoria emanating from the human activities around the lake and the negative impacts that this has on the communities' livelihood.

The workshop participants had the opportunity to observe the negative human activities such as over- fishing, human settlement and encroachment along the lake reserve, water hyacinth, siltation, car washing, dumping of solid waste, plastic bags and household wastewater that directly affect the water quality and marine life in Lake Victoria. The workshop participants also observed the similarity in the environmental issues in the three East African countries that affect the livelihoods of the lake region communities.

Workshop Outline

The Entebbe ToT Capacity Building Workshop covered the following City Development Strategy topics:

1. City Development Strategy (CDS) Process
2. Participatory Planning
3. Communication and Information Sharing
4. Teamwork and Team Building
5. Resource Mobilization
6. Project Management
7. Negotiation Skills
8. Teamwork & Team building

Workshop Objective

The objective of the ToT workshop is to build the capacity of local authorities around Lake Victoria region to prepare CDS through participatory planning for improved urban environment and poverty reduction.

Expected Workshop Outputs

The expected outputs from the workshop were as follows:

• The new and old cities will understand better how to practice participatory planning during the CDS process.
• The participants will be better placed to perfect the art of communication and negotiation skills that are necessary to impart information sharing and dissemination as well as both the council officials and stakeholders being better placed to negotiate successfully among themselves.
• The CDS working group member's synergies and teamwork will be improved for the benefit of the communities concerns.
• The local authorities will improve on own revenue sources and skills to seek funding elsewhere and in turn finance more action plans.
• The participants will have better understanding on how to implement and manage the action plans.
• The participants shall be well equipped to form a training of trainer's resource pool and undertake similar CDS workshops for the stakeholders back in their cities.

The participants made valuable contributions, and a checklist as the workshop progressed indicated the expectations were met. The training together of council officials and other stakeholders from the cities added value to the CDS process as this seems to have started building productive partnership between them.

The Way Forward

In the coming months the Kampala City Council officials agreed that they would try to include more stakeholders in the process. The other priority would be to increase their revenue sources so that they can finance more action plans. In Kisumu the coming months would see a move to seek funds sourcing by revenue enhancement measures. The priority of the Musoma Council was to enhance participatory planning and funds sourcing

The Second Generation cities stated that they would strive to have true stakeholder participation by having strong, active, successful, productive and honest interactions with the various stakeholders in their cities. The Second Generation cities agreed that they needed to be improve problems/issues identification, agree on what to do and carry out actions together. Integrating environment in the development plans was something all the three cities agreed was important not only for the CDS but in order to achieve the overall goal of poverty reduction.