EU awards Sierra Leone two projects to support local government in development

The project implemented by LoCASL (3.6 Billion Leones) will help to build leadership and institutional capacities in the execution of its mandate.

The Delegation of the European Union to Sierra Leone has awarded two projects to the Local Councils Association of Sierra Leone (LoCASL) and Freetown City Council (FCC). They will support capacities and contributions of Local Authorities in the governance and development processes in Sierra Leone.

The project implemented by LoCASL (3.6 Billion Leones) will help to build leadership and institutional capacities in the execution of its mandate. The aim is for LoCASL to be strengthened to better represent and serve its membership in providing an improved environment for effective service delivery. The 24-months project will also work towards establishing mechanisms to engage local authorities in dialogue with national authorities, with an emphasis on an effective decentralisation process.

The 24-months project implemented by FCC(3.1 Billion Leones) will work to empower and capacitate community-based micro-enterprises to carry out waste collection services to hard-to-reach and lower-income households and small commercial businesses in Freetown. The direct target group for this project is the youth engaged in the waste collection who will be equipped with vehicles and receive training in financial management, operations management and health and safety management skills. The project will contribute to the goal of ensuring that 60% of Freetown’s solid waste is safely collected, managed and disposed of by 2022.

The projects will be funded through the EU’s Civil Society Organisations and Local Authorities thematic budget-line funding. The Thematic Programme ''Civil Society Organisations and Local Authorities (CSO-LA)'', adopted in 2014, is the successor of the Non-State Actors and Local Authorities in Development programme 2007-2013. The programme aims at supporting CSOs' and LAs' contributions towards reinforced governance, accountability and inclusive policy-making, as envisaged in the Strategy and Multi-Annual Indicative Programme 2014-2020.

(With Inputs from APO)