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

Introduction

The aim of the Lake Victoria Region City Development Strategies initiative is to mobilize local governments and stakeholders to develop a programme for laying out strategies for improved urban environment and poverty reduction. Through a series of participatory activities and consultations, the initiative has yielded City Development Strategies (CDS) for implementation in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania with specific reference to Kisumu, Kampala and Musoma as the project sites in Phase I of the programme. In addition Strategic Action Plans (SAPS) and Strategic Investment Plans (SIPS) have been prepared in order to address identified priority urban issues in the pioneer cities. The issues include sanitation and drainage, waste management, income generation systems, shelter and infrastructure, revenue collection, HIV/AIDS pandemic, and promotion of inclusive processes and structures of local governance.

A key component of the Lake Victoria CDS deals specifically with financing of investment plans produced in the process. There is a need to strengthen the CDS programme with expertise regarding financing of local investments through creating a financing toolkit for strategic decision-making. It is also expected that several other cities along Lake Victoria aspire to prepare CDS. Simple guidelines will be prepared to assist in the rolling out of the CDS.

During the second phase of the Lake Victoria initiative, three additional cities have been identified for support. Bukoba, Entebbe and Homa Bay have been inducted as the Second Generation of CDS cities in the Lake Victoria region. The cities have been introduced to the City Development Strategies concept at a regional workshop to familiarize them with the CDS process. However, it is evident that cities around the Lake Region lack adequate capacities for planning and managing their resources in a participatory manner. A further regional training of trainer's workshop was held to build the capacities of the Second Generation cities in preparing and implementing their CDS programmes. The capacity building/training workshop focused on building the capacity of municipal officers, NGO/CBO practitioners, policy-makers and politicians to deal with the problem of urban environmental management linked to better access of the poor to urban services. Local experiences supplemented by lessons learnt from elsewhere formed an important core of the training programme.

The specific objectives of the City Development Strategy Experts Group Meeting:
• To review the guidelines for the preparation of the City Development Strategies
• To review the proposed draft outline for the Financing Toolkit for the City Development Strategies and Investment Plans

Expected Outputs
• A draft guideline on preparing City Development Strategies
• An annotated draft outline of the Financing Toolkit
• An identification of capacity building/basic training and awareness raising needs, to enable the cities to access and fully utilize the Financing Toolkit.