10th UCLG-A executive meeting starts Monday |09 May 2014

Twenty-five delegates including 15 mayors from all regions of Africa will take part in the 10th executive committee meeting of the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa (UCLG-A) from May 12-13.

The meeting which will take place at the Hilton Seychelles Allamanda Resort & Spa, Anse Forbans, is being hosted by the Office of the Mayor of Victoria.

The United Cities and Local Governments of Africa was founded on May 2005 to represent the common voice of local authorities, and ensure that local governments are recognised as an autonomous and distinct level of public governance, fully capacitated to deliver on their mandates.

Since January 2008, the UCLG-A is headquartered in Rabat, Morocco where it is granted a diplomatic status as an international Pan African organisation. The UCLG-A president is the Mayor of Dakar, Khalifa Ababacar Sall.

The UCLG-A is the global section of the global organisation, the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) whose headquarters is in Barcelona and is chaired by the Mayor of Istanbul, Kadir Topbaş.
The Mayor of Victoria, Jacqueline Moustache-Belle, is both co-president of UCLG World and vice president for the East Africa region for UCLG-Africa.

The UCLG-A implements its interventions based on a long-term perspective strategy adopted by the executive committee in 2007, also known as the Governance, Advocacy, Decentralised Development for Africa (Gaddepa).

Among the activities implemented under Gaddepa is the Africities summit, the UCLG-A flagship activity. The Africities summits are organised on a triennial basis, bringing together over 5,000 delegates among which national governments ministers, local authorities, civil society and private sector representatives, academia and researchers, professionals from national and local administrations, African Union bodies, and international cooperation institutions.

The next Africities summit will take place from December 1-5, 2015 in Johannesburg, South Africa.     
In order to implement its mandate, the UCLG-A has launched a series of initiatives that require the support of national governments.

The first such initiative is the drafting of the African Charter on values and principles of decentralisation and local development. This project was endorsed by the African Union technical committee on decentralisation and its adoption is among the agenda item of the next AU summit of Heads of State and government scheduled next July in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.

The second initiative is the proposal to set up a high council of local authorities among the Africa Union institution. This project was introduced for the first time at the AU summit of Heads of State and government of January 2013 in Addis Ababa by Senegal President Macky Sall.

 The summit endorsed the project, pending further information about the financial sustainability of this new institution. The project is now under a review process by the AU commission and should be submitted to the committee of permanent representatives (country ambassadors to the AU) for consideration as an agenda item of the nearest summit of Heads of State and government after the Malabo summit.

The third initiative is the creation of the African Local Government Academy (Alga) that should start operating in September 2015. Among others, Alga intents to train senior staff of local governments: city managers, city financial officers (CFOs), city technical officers (CTOs). For this initiative UCLG-A wishes to receive political, financial and any other support from national governments.

Finally there is need for a strong political support to ensure sustainability of the UCLG-A. This is why the organisation is seeking introduction letters to educate the Heads of State or government on the importance to accord their support to the UCLG-A.

The hosting of the executive committee meeting of the UCLGA is rotated within member countries of the executive committee.