Angola: On its way to better local governance
One of Africa's biggest oil producers, Angola is also one of the world's poorest countries. It is striving to tackle the physical, social and political legacy of the 27-year civil war that ravaged the country after independence. Within this context the issue of decentralization is at the top of the Angolan Government's reform agenda.
Angola enacted the Local Administration Decree in 1999, providing a detailed framework for deconcentration and has since highlighted decentralization in the principles approved for the future Angolan Constitution.
Moreover, the country has recently approved Decree 2/07 which paves the way for further decentralization as selected municipalities become increasingly responsible for their budgets. Decentralization, however, remains a complex process that requires challenging human and institutional reforms to. There is broad consensus that improved monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems at the local level can enable better budget and planning processes, service delivery, community participation and overall strengthen governance at the local level.
As part of a larger decentralization project between the Government of Angola and UNDP; UNDP Angola and Oslo Governance Centre is helping build the capacity of 15 municipal administrations to conduct systematic democratic governance assessment at the local level.
The Project seeks to strengthen public participation in local governance and development by providing training, coaching, mentoring and establishing systems and procedures for data collection, analysis and dissemination. The main purpose is to strengthen local administration capacity for policy making based on governance evidence.
The immediate objective is to support the design and use of a municipal governance assessment tool, which monitors the development of governance capacities and pro-poor oriented performance assessment.
The Global Programme on Democratic Governance Assessments recently launched a mission to Luanda to conduct a training of provincial and municipal stakeholders.
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